


Getting Used To It

by girlskylark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Body Swap, Bodyswap, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt Lance (Voltron), Implied/Referenced Suicide, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith and Shiro are Siblings, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Lance (Voltron), Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), lance suffers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-23 01:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12495016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlskylark/pseuds/girlskylark
Summary: Keith's life is dull, to say the least, but he prefers "dull" over "suffering from post-concussion(s)". When Lance and Keith swap bodies randomly, Lance revels in the fact that Keith's body is fit, healthy, and never in constant agony. Keith has to deal with the after effects of Lance's reckless high school sport shenanigans, and in the process is stuck with Hunk as his companion trying to figure this shit out.





	1. Mini Vacation

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote half of this on my phone during bus rides, so sorry for any mistakes! I'm having a friend go through it now :)

Keith spent all of his life getting used to it. He didn’t _ask_ to be there, and yet he was forced to come to terms with the fact that this was his lot in life, and there was little to nothing that he could do about it. It would take more than just a few “good days” to convince him that it was all worth it, but everyone had a part to play in this fuckery, and this was his.

Attempting… to save the world. Environmental science was only as good as the leaders who implemented it. At least, that was the conclusion he was coming to lately. He was getting used to the fact that he held little power to make a change. It wasn’t even that he particularly _liked_ environmental science—someone asked him what he wanted to do and he picked the first thing that came to mind and figured it was better than saying nothing.

It was getting difficult to believe anything he convinced himself of. 

Despite what his current mindset would suggest, he didn’t want to be anywhere other than _here_ if he had a say in it. The consequences of living someone else’s life didn’t sound appealing to him. It’d be best if he just stayed put and figure his shit out before reeling someone else into it. He wasn’t sure how long that would take, but it was about to take a whole lot longer than he expected.

 

. . .

 

Lance woke up from another _weird_ weekend and wondered if he took any drugs the night before, because _shit_ was he feeling them now. He didn’t even remember crashing at the frat, but that was _definitely_ not his ceiling. 

He took a deep breath in and felt it like wind howling through a cavern, turning into the cold taste of mint gum touching winter air. Every part of himself felt out of proportion and _what_ was _with_ this _headache?_

Lance rolled over with a groan, feeling as though his limbs were detached from one another, and was simultaneously floating and sinking under some obscure, unfamiliar _weight_. Whatever he took last night was _not_ worth it. “So not worth it…” he moaned, becoming aware that his voice sounded like the after effects of screaming at a concert.

He touched a hand to his face and timidly tested his voice again. _That’s not my voice_. It didn’t _feel_ like he spent all night screaming—wouldn’t his throat feel funny then? He opened his eyes again, sitting up, and groaning under the head rush that sent his vision bubbling and charring around the edges.

Lance knew his exact skin tone palette in L’Oreal standards and his hands were _definitely_ not it. He squeaked in terror, wondering _where the hell his brown skin went_. He scrambled out of bed with a shout, tripping over his feet and tumbling to the ground when his legs didn’t obey him. He felt _bulky_ and _clunky_ and full of marbles as he searched the frat room for a mirror—his phone— _anything._

He shoved into the bathroom on weak, unpracticed legs and clutched at the countertop as he got the first glimpse of someone who _definitely. Wasn’t. Him._

“Holy shit,” he gasped, running his hands over his pale face, pulling the skin down from his eyes to see their grey color. He tipped his head from side to side, taking note of the definition of this stranger’s jaw, his (small) ears, and _fuck_ , those _shoulders_. Lance rolled them back and watched the man in the mirror reflect his movements perfectly. _This kid woulda been a great swimmer_ , he thought, but he really said, “I have a _mullet_?”

Lance combed his fingers through his hair and laughed, his shock turning into amusement as he realized that this was the perfect opportunity to explore a little. He pulled up on his shirt and gasped out loud. “ _Abs?_ No way!” he exclaimed, pulling his shirt off completely to lean up to the mirror and inspect the pores on his face, the planes of his back, and rub his hands up and down his stomach. “So cool—I’ve always wanted abs,” he confessed, patting his hands on his stomach as he headed back to the bedroom.

He scratched at his hair as peered out of the window over the desk. The view was obstructed by the fire escape, and when he tried to lift the window, its rusty edges got stuck—his arms felt too much like noodles to work properly anyways. He resorted to kicking at the backpack resting against the legs of the desk chair. He had more motor control than before, but controlling his fingers was like using individual strings to move them. He was a clumsy puppet as he unzipped every pocket in the backpack and at last found a wallet nestled among a small pad of note paper and keys. 

Lance rocked on his heels and fell onto his bum as he plucked out the license of this stranger. “Keith Kogane. _Sweet_ , same age,” he said, tapping at the birth year before realizing that this license didn’t look at all like California one. “ _Colorado?_ Shit, that’s cool,” he laughed, kicking his legs out before bringing them back in. He flicked the license away and went digging for more. “You got a phone, buster? Aha! Here we are.”

He slid the phone off of the end table, and ignore how difficult it was to read a phone screen when his vision was bubbling. It would take some getting used to, considering he wasn’t used to perfect 20/20 vision. He squinted at the lock screen as it warped at the edges and made the time incredibly crisp.

His momentary panic over unlocking the phone vanished as soon as it recognized his thumbprint. He breathed a sigh of relief, and collapsed on his side to sift through this guy’s photos. There weren’t many, and most of them were just taken for the purpose of remembering shit. His class schedule, screenshotted. Notes on a whiteboard. All the while, Lance tugged at his new black hair and rolled around on the floor so he was on his back, and his hands could rub at his abs all he wanted. 

Eventually, hunger started to gnaw at his stomach so he went to investigate the kitchen. His vision was back on track, which meant his lack of eye-strain banished the headache.

Lance hadn’t felt this great in _years_. He figured that somehow, his subconscious remembered the days when he no longer had migraines or headaches or _joint pain._ He was _living._

_Change of plans_ , he decided, hurrying back to the backpack. He grabbed it, stuffed the wallet, keys, phone, and notebook back in. He flung the straps over his shoulders and took to the door.

His bedroom opened to a hallway. There was an open bedroom door across from his. _Roommates?_ He didn’t find out until he curbed straight through the living room and kitchen to the front door. He was nearly to freedom when someone’s voice called from the couch in the living room.

“Keith? Where are you going? It’s Saturday.”

“Out,” Lance said, turning to look and freeze at the sight of that _hottie_ sitting in the living room, arms back on the cushions. Black-haired, tall, Asian (he was starting to realize that he liked a little Asian now). _Fuck me_ , he panted internally. “Uh… I think I might go for a hike.”

“A _hike_?” the guy said, about to get up when Lance was already disappearing behind the door. “Wait, Keith—“

Lance hurried down the hall, giggling up a storm as he followed the exit signs and cruised down the apartment stairs. He spied the exit door. He bolted out of it and stopped on the curb of the parking lot to gasp, hands on his face, and then throw his arms up with a giddy cry of excitement.

“What a realistic dream! I’ve never even _been_ to Colorado!” he shouted, laughing as he turned around and around. The campus merged with the mountains and the foothills that were absolutely covered in pine trees. The buildings were all brick and cement, with tall windows and stores underneath. 

Lance took off sprinting to the road in search of a bus that would take him wherever the mountains were.

 

. . .

 

Keith woke up feeling as though a bus had hit him, reversed, and run over his head.

He moaned, putting two hands over his eyes and pressing hard, relieving the pain for only a moment before it occurred to him that his limbs felt numb, and moved as though they were controlled by someone other than _him._ One of his legs was stuck under something heavy and _hot_. A breeze pulled over his very, _very_ exposed skin and had him floundering for a blanket.

He hit someone in the head.

“Ow, hey, watch the face,” a man’s voice said. Keith squeaked and shoved himself away. His hand lost traction in the air, and he fell backwards, rolling _naked_ onto the floor with another scream.

He tried to push himself up, but his knees were a _wreck_. They didn’t just _ache_ , they _throbbed_. They pulsed like fire and burned like it even more so. “Holy _fuck_ ,” he breathed, panting as sweat started to collect where his temples hurt the most.

Whatever light was coming through the blinds _stung_. He screwed his eyes shut and moaned, “Fuck, fuck, _fuck…”_

“Hey, are you okay?” the guy asked, sitting up in the bed as Keith tried to stop the world from spinning. It looked as though a foggy glass was shoved over his eyes, and no matter how many times he blinked, it wasn’t clearing up.

“Why can’t I see?” he asked, panicked as he tried to sit up again and search for a shirt he swore he fell on.

“Maybe because you aren’t wearing your glasses? Here—” The guy reached across the bed to the end table as Keith tried to cope with the fact that, while he had never _owned_ a pair of glasses before, he was suddenly being offered some as if they were an everyday thing. 

It occurred to him that something was weighing on his chest that had his breath coming in pants. It felt like something wasn’t working right in his chest—his heart was fast, straining with the new weight clogging his lungs. It was the same sensation he got when he ran five miles, or went hiking with Shiro.

His vision wavered when he put the glasses on. His fingers were thawing, but still refused to completely obey Keith before he realized that something was _horribly wrong with his skin color_. Did he get into a fight with a tanning booth or something? If he did, the tanning booth _definitely_ won, and gave him a concussion, too.

“You okay? Hangover?” the guy asked, but Keith shook his head because this _definitely_ wasn’t the hangover he was used to. He clutched at his hair, and gasped when he realized that _none of it was there_. Why the hell was it so short? 

“Oh my God,” he breathed, the pain in his head springing tears to his eyes. “What the fuck is going on, what is going on—”

“Hey, hey—it’s okay. I’ll just—I’ll get Hunk, all right? What hurts so I can get you some painkillers? An ice pack?” the guy said, hurrying off the sheets, stark naked. Keith shut his eyes, covering his face with both hands. His face felt _weird_ and _soft_ and _why the fuck was his nose shaped like this?_ Was he wearing a mask? His nose wasn’t usually this pointy—

“I’ll be right back, stay where you are,” the guy ordered, and hurried out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Keith started hyperventilating before he could stop himself. He leant forward over his knees so his forehead touched the ground. He hoped that by condensing himself, his breathing spasms would be less intense.

_What is happening to me?_ he thought desperately, clutching onto the shirt that covered his modesty when the door to the bedroom burst open again. 

“Lance! Oh my God, what’s wrong? What happened?” a new voice exploded, startling Keith’s eyes up to the man who was hurrying over to him. He was intimidatingly big, buff, and Keith was sure the man could crush his skull just with his two large hands that were reaching towards him—

“Don’t touch me!” he screamed, shoving away, feet skidding on the wood as he slammed back into the end table, eyes wider than ever. 

The man stopped dead in his tracks, and looked back at the half-dressed stranger standing in the threshold. “I think… maybe you should leave?” 

The guy blinked, startled, and looked between Keith and the big guy once before saying, “Um, okay. Let me just… grab my stuff real quick and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Keith flinched when the guy grabbed an article of clothing near him, and then a phone from the nightstand behind him. Keith was sweating up a storm, and he could feel it cooling on his stomach and neck as the guy finally left him alone with that _beast of a man_ that took up the entire doorway on his own. He was the tallest human being Keith ever knew—taller than Shiro, even.

“Don’t come near me,” Keith bit out through gritted teeth, clenched in agony.

“Okay, I won’t,” the guy said. “How much did you drink last night?”

“ _Nothing—_ ”

“Really? ‘Cause I watched you win at beer pong,” he said with a smile that Keith didn’t return because he was too busy trying to work through the pain in his skull that made it feel like it was splitting in two straight down the middle of his forehead. “Okay, right, not funny. Let’s get you dressed and—”

“ _No!_ No, don’t touch me! D-Don’t—! I don’t know you!” Keith shrieked, voice shrill and breaking into an unintentional sob. He didn’t have the energy to be embarrassed. “Everything _hurts_ I don’t know _where I am—_ ”

“Dude, we’re at home. What hurts?” he said, crouching down a few paces in front of Keith. In the space between them, Keith could see brown legs where his pale white ones should have been. 

Keith pulled his knees up, and hid his sobs behind them. The tears didn’t relieve the tension inside his skull. His brain felt too big for his head, like it wanted to shove itself through his eye sockets. 

“Do you… Do you wanna get it checked out? Maybe we should go to the doctor or something?” the guy asked, and even in Keith’s shattered mindset, he knew that that was the answer. He nodded slowly, trying to pull his forehead away from his knees, but he physically couldn’t. His glasses were spotted with liquid dots that morphed together and made the world look like it was underwater. “Alright. We gotta get you dressed, okay?”

“I-I don’t—I don’t know you,” he stammered quietly.

“Okay… well, I’m Hunk, you know, friend from elementary school?” the guy said, and Keith shook his head, gasping for air that his lungs instantly rejected. “Hm. Well, who are you?”

Somehow, Keith was able to remove his head from his knees and look at Hunk. “Keith. My name’s Keith.”

The instant Keith finished dressing, he trusted Hunk well enough to hold him around the shoulders and take the phone Hunk claimed was Keith’s. “Let’s not tell anyone that yet, okay?” he said to Keith about his name, nervous about the entire situation as he helped Keith into the passenger’s seat of some random vehicle.

Keith was too bleary-eyed to see anything, or comprehend the fact that they passed some palm trees on the way to the hospital. The road was giving him motion sickness, so he reclined back in the seat with a groan and folded his arms over his eyes. Keith was so done with everything by the time Hunk helped him stagger into the emergency room on numb, disoriented legs. When Hunk helped him sign in, writing Keith’s name as “Lance McClain,” he tried to keep his mouth shut—he really did—but he still managed to squeak, “It’s _Keith_ —”

“I know, hun, just roll with it, alright?” Hunk said, giving him a light pat on the shoulder as a nurse came out from one of the hallways to swoop Keith away. “I’ll take care of this. You go with her.”

Keith couldn’t lift his eyes off of the ground, so he just turned and followed the shadow of the nurse down a separate corridor. Hunk watched after him, his brows creasing together as he finished filling out the info on Lance’s medical sheet as the secretary checked Lance’s insurance card. After it was all taken care of, he took a seat in the waiting room, slipping Lance’s card into his wallet with a sigh. So much for a relaxing, post-party morning.

In the midst of twiddling his thumbs and worrying himself sick over Lance, one of the phones in his pocket went off. He pulled out his own, and then Lance’s, which was vibrating incessantly with a foreign number listed on it. It didn’t look like a telemarketer number, so Hunk answered it. “Hello?”

“ _Hunk! So good to hear your voice! You aren’t here right now so I’m missin’ my Hunkster. You know, withdrawals and all that,_ ” someone said, and Hunk knew the phrases instantly. He heard this same sort of greeting a dozen times before.

“Lance?” he said, sitting up straighter and looking in the direction of where his friend just disappeared with the nurse. He turned pale. “What—? I have your phone, this is _your phone_.”

“ _I know, I was just wondering who had it if it’s not on me_ ,” he confessed.

“Are you okay? You don’t sound right. Where… the hell are you, exactly?” Hunk asked, standing up to pace towards the exit, away from where the secretary was probably giving him weird looks. 

“ _Colorado!_ Man _, this place is_ gorgeous _._ _Best dream ever I’ve always wanted to go here—_ ”

“You mean—you’re not—wait—” Hunk stopped, clutching a hand over his mouth with a curse. “You sure you’re not with me right now? Because I just drove you to the hospital, dude.”

“ _What? No, I’m in Colorado. I swear to God I’m in the mountains right now. Service is shit, if I’m being honest—_ ”

“Dude, I just checked you into the E.R. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on, but you were just saying your name was Keith five minutes ago.”

Hunk was met with silence, and then a quizzical, “ _Huh. That explains why I’m in Keith’s body right now. What a weird dream, huh? I’ll talk to you later, Hunk_.”

“What? Wait, Lance—Keith— _fuck_ ,” Hunk cursed, pulling his phone away and finding that the line went dead. “You have _got_ to be shitting me.”

Hunk immediately called the number back, and got an annoyed groan from, presumably, the person who claimed to be his best friend. “ _Lance_ , don’t fucking hang up on me this isn’t a dream.”

“ _Ha, sure it isn’t. And I’m not climbing a boulder right now. I’ll talk to you when I wake up, bro_.”

“Lance! Don’t hang up on me! Lan—God damn it!” Hunk cursed again, and no matter how many times he dialed that number again, it went to voicemail, which was listed as, “ _Hey, this is Keith. I’m not at the phone right now, but if you leave a message I might get back to you_.”

When the phone buzzed, Hunk sighed, “Fuck it,” and said, “Lance, you idiot, I think whoever this Keith person is is dealing with your _stupidity_ right about now. Not everyone can deal with your level of post-multiple-concussions bullshit. I hope playing soccer in high school was worth it, asshole.”

Hunk hung up with a furious groan, crossing his arms as an elderly couple passed him to head into the hospital foyer. He smiled amiably, but inside he was boiling with a mix of confused horror and annoyance for his friend Lance. He never pegged Lance as selfish, so he tried to tell himself that this was all just one big nightmare instead of the dream Lance was pretending it was.

 

. . .

 

Nothing was deemed horribly wrong with Keith, and after having a break from blood tests and shit, Hunk was able to sneak in and talk with Keith without the doctors listening in. He shut the door behind him, quietly, as if afraid of looking suspicious. It just made him look even more suspicious, and when he turned around, his friend Lance was scowling at him. _Keith_ , this is _Keith_. 

_Right, well, this isn’t confusing, is it?_ Hunk thought bitterly.

He let out a shaky sigh and said, “Okay. So. I just had a chat with Lance, and… I’ve determined that you aren’t him.”

“You think?” Keith hissed, using the sharpest tone Hunk had ever heard come out of Lance’s mouth. He didn’t even know Lance was capable of sounding so furious. “What the fuck is going on?”

“You two must have switched bodies,” Hunk explained, shaking his head. “It sounds impossible, but it makes sense. I mean, Lance was an idiot in high school and screwed up his body playing soccer and football and shit. I’m guessing you don’t usually get migraines, right?”

Keith only glared at him, but looked away, not wanting to answer. He had his arms crossed, guarded, and nothing like the open Lance Hunk knew so well.

“Lance suffers from chronic migraines from his past concussions,” Hunk explained. “My guess is that they’re gonna try and get you an MRI scan just to answer what we’ve known for years—that Lance is a dumbass and should’ve stopped playing sports years ago. I know it sucks, but he’s got leftover vicodin pills from when he got his wisdom teeth out and didn’t use ‘em. He’s also got a shitton of Advil and stuff. It’s the best we can do, but it’s better than paying for this shit.”

Keith could only look at Hunk for a second at a time, and took to staring at his hands as the news sunk in beyond the throbbing pain in his skull. “Okay, so… what do I do?” he asked quietly, voice shaking.

At that time, someone knocked on the door, and Hunk called out to the nurse that it’d just be another minute or so. Hunk stepped closer to the bench Keith was sitting on, and Keith stayed put as Hunk dropped into a whisper. “Okay, so you’re gonna have to convince them that you’re fine and it’s just from your last concussion. If they ask about it, say that it happened four years ago, and the headaches have just been worse than usual. Hopefully that’ll work, but it’s not like they can force you to do tests you don’t want to do.”

“Okay. Sounds good,” Keith whispered. 

“And I know we don’t technically know each other, but… I doubt you’ve even _been_ to California. Guess I’ll be your tour guide until we sort this out, huh?” Hunk laughed, and Keith offered a soft, timid smile. “I’ll be in the waiting room.”

“‘Kay,” he said, and tucked his hands under his legs as Hunk wandered off to the door. A moment later, the nurse passed Hunk in the hallway. He could only hope that he knew what the fuck he was doing, but then again, no one could really prepare him for having to deal with someone accidentally stealing his best friend’s body.

Hunk paced the waiting room until Keith came out a little while later, smiling because he had a prescription sheet in his hand for better painkillers. Hunk couldn’t help but laugh, and went in to hug him. Keith tensed in his arms, but relaxed with just one of Hunk’s arms over his shoulders. 

“So… I’m Lance then,” Keith said as they were leaving the hospital. “That’s…”

“Weird, I know. Sorry about this morning— _God_ , no wonder you were so freaked out,” Hunk said, shaking his head. “We were at a party last night, and Lance and that guy used to hook up every now and then. It’s nothing serious, so you won’t have to see him again.”

“Oh, good. Oh my God, that was so weird,” Keith admitted, rubbing a hand over his face with a groan. “Can we just…? I _really_ need some medicine right now.”

“Oh, shit, right. Okay, hop in—we’ll go to the pharmacy right now,” Hunk said, but before they could completely split away from one another, Hunk reeled him back in and whispered, “And just between you and me… we could probably get you some pot if you wanted…”

“ _What?_ Gross, no!”

“What? But I thought you were from Colorado!” Hunk whined. 

“Yeah, _so?_ Not _everyone_ from Colorado smokes!” he cried out, and laughed at the pout on Hunk’s usually intimidating space. “Oh my God, I’m not into smoking, I swear.”

“Fine! Fine, won’t offer it again. But… it’s always an option.” Hunk pegged him with a jab in the shoulder before heading off to the driver’s door. Keith couldn’t believe that he was laughing with this infernal headache driving him _mad_.

As they drove, Keith pulled his knees up again and pit at his nails. After he broke the skin once, he remembered that this wasn’t even his body. He’d never been able to control his nervous habits before, but… this was certainly _one_ way to stop himself from nail-biting. He tucked his hands between his calves with a sigh and wondered what the hell this “Lance” kid was doing with _his_ body. 

“Oh _God_ …” Keith moaned, putting his hands in his face instantly. 

“What? What is it?” Hunk asked.

“Oh _no_ —! Shiro’s gonna know something’s wrong, I just know it,” he whined.

“Shiro? Who’s that, your boyfriend or something?” he asked, and Keith shook his head quickly.

“ _No_ , no—he’s my brother. We live in an apartment together with two other people,” he explained, shaking his head. “Shiro’s gonna get him committed or _something_. I don’t even want to _know what—_ ”

“Hey, it’s probably fine. Last I heard, Lance is out hiking or something. I don’t think you have to worry about him bumping into your brother until later,” Hunk reassured him, but Keith was back to biting his nails despite his newfound self-restraint. “We’ll call Lance when we get to the pharmacy and… you can talk to him or something! It’ll be fine.”

Keith hummed his agreement, but he wasn’t really feeling it. Wearing glasses was weird and gave him motion sickness, so he went back to reclining in the chair and closing his eyes until the car stopped outside of the pharmacy. Hunk chanted Lance’s birthday to Keith, the address they lived at, and other nonsensical things so that when he had to repeat them to the lady behind the glass wall, he didn’t come across as suspiciously not-Lance. This felt like The Most Illegal Thing He Had Ever Done In His Life, and felt guilty about it all the way home while he waited for the painkillers to kick in. 

That day Keith found out that he was living with an entire household of people he didn’t know. People were constantly coming and going through the living room where Hunk sat him. It didn’t take long for Keith’s anxiety to spike, and he tried _so hard_ not to ruin Lance’s nails, but it was already happening.

“Dude, do you wanna go to Lance’s room or something?” Hunk ask him, but he quickly shook his head. He didn’t want to spend time where he woke up naked in bed with another guy. Hunk seemed to get his thought process, which was just a miracle in and of itself. “Right, then let’s go to my room. And I’ll clean up… Lance’s mess from last night.”

“You sure?” Keith asked.

“Yeah, positive. C’mon,” he said, pulling Keith by the wrist down the hall. He deflected the greeting from one of their housemates and hastily closed his bedroom door behind them. Keith felt his relief pass through him like his soul transcending. This was _far_ too much interaction for one day.

Keith looked around the room, and headed towards the small armchair in the corner of the room. It had wooden legs and was upholstered with a floral pattern that Hunk commented on. “Yeah… that used to sit in my grandma’s attic.”

“It’s nice,” Keith said, crossing his legs. Hunk’s room was definitely cleaner than Lance’s, and he was grateful for when Hunk disappeared to take care of that after shedding his jacket and shoes. 

Hunk wasn’t even gone five minutes when someone’s phone started going off. Keith saw it light up in Hunk’s coat pocket, and, curious, Keith went to investigate. He plucked it out of Hunk’s pocket and lifted an eyebrow at the sight of his _actual_ phone number listed on it.

Keith swiped to answer it and put the speaker to his ear as he said, “Hello?”

“ _Um… you aren’t Hunk._ ”

“No, this is Keith. Why are you using my phone?” he asked, returning to his chair as he added, “You must be Lance.”

“ _Uh, Yeah, weird how you say that using_ my voice. _I almost didn’t recognize me,_ ” Lance said with a laugh, and Keith scowled at the floor, adjusting his glasses. “ _Okay, so, this is weird. I just got a voicemail from Hunk talking about… being at the hospital or something? Is that real or fake._ ”

“It was real. We left but these headaches are still bullshit.”

“ _Don’t I know it. By the way, I’m_ really _loving this bod. And not just because of the abs._ ”

Keith had the good sense to blush and stammer, tucking his knees close to his chest as Lance laughed on the other end of the line. It was easy for Keith to ignore the fact that Lance was using _his_ voice because he had never heard it over the phone before. Quite honestly, it was difficult for him to even _remember_ what his body looked like because for the most part, he skimmed over it in the mirror. Just another necessary thing to deal with everyday. 

“I can’t believe you,” Keith muttered into his knees. 

“ _I’m serious! Your vision is better than mine, and the elevation isn’t even bothering me. Like? This is great! I love this oh my God my knees aren’t even killing me and I’ve been jumping off of boulders and shit._ ”

“Please don’t wreck my knees via jumping off boulders,” Keith told him, which had Lance laughing. “I’m serious! I’m a runner and I seriously can’t deal with a bum knee! Not to mention my brother would think it’s suspicious that I’m shitting all over our progress for the marathon.”

“ _Marathon? Wait—_ brother?! _Was that guy in your apartment—_ ”

“Oh _no_ —you already met him,” Keith groaned, his unnecessary anxiousness turning into a _real_ panic. “Oh my God—”

“ _Whoa, hey, don’t freak out. I just saw him when I was leaving. I didn’t mention anything,_ ” Lance said. “ _He was just hanging out in the living room._ ”

Keith tucked his thumbnail between his teeth and wondered how the hell Shiro would even cope with this. Just as he was worrying about _that dilemma_ , he realized an entirely different one. The source of his anxiety for the past _week_.

“Oh my God, no, no, no. Oh shit,” Keith hissed. “I have a botany exam on Monday.”

“ _Dude that’s fine. We’ll probably be back to normal by tonight,_ ” Lance said.

“But if we _aren’t?_ Then what?” Keith snapped. “I seriously cannot afford to retake botany, okay? That would set back my graduation by an entire year. I can’t fail a single one of the exams or risk skimming by with a C-.”

“ _Whoa, hey, don’t worry about it. Just—Okay, my family has some flight miles you could probably get a flight to Colorado for half the price and… I’ll deal with the consequences later_ ,” Lance said, and added in a mutter, “ _If my mom doesn’t kill me first for supposedly flying to Colorado…_ ”

“I can’t spend your money,” Keith insisted.

“ _Then what the fuck do you want to do? I mean, I have a great memory, but I don’t trust my memory with someone else’s body. I don’t think I have the time to memorize half a semester of botany_ ,” Lance said with a nervous laugh. “ _But… if you want me to do that for you_ …”

“No, no… you’re right. This is total bullshit. And it’s Saturday, which means… my brother and I were supposed to do our ten mile run today,” Keith sighed, but it swiftly turned into a groan. 

“ _Ten miles? How hard could that be._ ”

 

. . .

 

Lance was sure he was dying. This couldn’t be a dream anymore because the pain of cardio workouts was coming back in the form of aching lungs and a burning throat. But, a _grand_ motivation method involved just… watching Keith’s brother’s _ass_ several paces ahead of him. Excellent. Perfect. Superb. Lance had never seen an ass as fine as Shiro’s—except, maybe, Keith’s… but he had yet to explore that whole realm. He figured tonight would be as good a night as ever to take care of _that_ bit of curiosity. 

Lance was grateful that they didn’t talk at all during the run, because he wasn’t exactly sure how to talk to Keith’s brother yet. Keith made it sound like if Lance so much as opened his mouth, Shiro would be able to tell that something was off. 

Running wasn’t exactly a pastime he could afford to do anymore. He used to love it, but now just the _thought_ of his feet repeatedly marching on pavement made his knees _ache_. 

Eventually, Lance was sure his heart was about to give out, and he stuttered to a halt on the side of the road, hands on his knees, panting so hard that his breath came out in whistles. It took a moment, but he soon felt Shiro’s hand on his shoulder, asking, “Hey, you okay?”

“I’m—fine,” he said, but his cough said otherwise.

“I was gonna tell you this morning that maybe a hike wasn’t the best thing,” Shiro laughed. “We’ve got four miles to go still…”

“I can do it,” Lance promised. “Just give me a second.”

“You really have to stop pushing yourself so hard,” Shiro said, standing straighter and walking away. When Lance tried to straighten back up, it felt like he’d been folded over for a year. He wanted so terribly to just flop straight over again, and collapse on the ground with a pained groan. 

_You’ve been through worse. Suck it up_ , he told himself, and wondered exactly how much Keith would hate him for slacking on this. It sounded like training with Shiro was a big deal to Keith, and Lance was over here being a whiny little brat about it.

Four miles later, when they arrived back at the apartment, Lance was careful to make sure that he didn’t jump to any conclusions. He let Shiro initiate everything, like the cool-down exercises, and the small meal they ate thirty minutes after finishing everything up. Lance didn’t know what marathon training was all about, by any means, but had it all been up to him, he would have collapsed on the couch with a bag of potato chips and gorged himself.

Lance leant up against the countertop as Shiro made sandwiches for them and said, “Sorry about early. I was… slower than usual today.”

“It’s fine. We all have bad days. Has something been bothering you?” he asked, and Lance blinked, thinking, _Wow, this guy sure knows how to get straight to the point_.

“Uh…” Lance droned, and was grateful when the front door opened and interrupted what could have been a seriously _awkward_ conversation. 

“Sup _nerds_!” a short, ginger-haired girl shouted as she sauntered into the apartment, holding up four grocery bags. “I’ve got the goods!”

She was wearing massive glasses Lance wouldn’t be surprised to find sitting on his grandpa’s nightstand. Her hair was stuck in all different directions, frizzy, like she’d just gotten out of bed. The guy who walked in behind her had his hair at least contained in a ponytail, and it looked like he was about the same age as Shir—WOAH.

“Hey,” the guy said, sneaking up behind Shiro and kissing his cheek before moving to the refrigerator. Lance’s jaw dropped, but he instantly shut it to avoid looking surprised that he was living with Shiro’s _boyfriend_. This was the hottest scenario Lance’s subconscious could have ever come up with, but he had to remind himself to stop thinking about this like a dream because this was 100% real and totally _hot_.

“ _Gay_ ,” the girl—Keith said her name was Pidge—teased, but Shiro just stuck his tongue out at her.

“Pidge, Matt, do you guys want sandwiches too?”

“Nah, we ate at Noods,” Pidge said, hopping onto the barstool beside Lance.

“I asked if you wanted some, but you must’ve been out,” Matt said.

“Yeah. That’s fine though—Could you grab the chocolate milk?” Shiro asked, and Matt went ahead and poured glasses for all of them. Lance’s chest was somehow still burning, and the chocolate milk diluted some of it. They were talking about something that was going on that week at the university when Lance’s phone started to hum, and he looked at it sparingly where he put his phone number from California under the name _Tall Dark And Handsome_.

“Oooh, who’s that? Is that a new _boy-frand?_ ” Pidge teased, twisting around on her stool to tuck her head against Lance’s shoulder as he scoffed and hopped off the stool. 

“ _Maybe_ ,” he joked, answering the phone as Pidge cackled on the countertop, and he disappeared down the hall to Keith’s room.

He shut the door and said, “Hey, what’s up?” 

“ _Hunk helped me buy a ticket there, and I figured regardless of what happens… you could just… Like, if we don’t switch back, you could just…_ keep _my body or whatever and get a ticket back to California. And I’ll just figure out how to deal with Shiro_ ,” Keith said. “ _Just, promise me you won’t do anything embarrassing? Or detrimental to my nonexistent social life?_ ”

At the mention of it, Lance went to stand in front of the mirror and pulled up his shirt that felt moist from the run. Keith’s abs were still there. It didn’t feel like he was controlling a puppet anymore, that’s for sure. He realized that halfway through the run, when his feet no longer felt like they were the wrong shape, and his arms were no longer noodles. 

“Okay. Nothing embarrassing or detrimental to your nonexistent social life. Got it,” Lance said. “Hey, do you think it’s gonna be weird to see each other? ‘Cause we’ve technically never seen our real selves before. Mirrors and reflections don’t exactly pass for that.”

“ _I know, I’ve been thinking about it,_ ” Keith confessed, and Lance could hear his voice muffled, like something was stuck in his teeth. “ _Worse case scenario: We both lose our minds_.”

“Wow, perfect, exactly what I wanted to hear,” Lance said sarcastically. “So where are you now?”

“ _In the car with Hunk heading to the airport_.”

“Ooh! Let me talk to Hunk!” Lance insisted, shimmying out of his pants with one hand as the phone line crackled before reassembling in the sound of Hunk’s beautiful voice. “Hunk!”

“ _Lance! You asshole! I sure hope you have your pants on_ ,” Hunk said, and Lance paused in the middle of pulling Keith’s boxers down. “ _Lance, I’m serious. This is a complete stranger’s body you’re in, please respect it_.”

“I am! I am, Jesus,” Lance muttered, bitter now that his plans were foiled. He pulled Keith’s sweats back on. “I wish you could see his abs, though. I’m downloading Snapchat and making him an account.”

“ _Don’t you fucking dare that’s not your phone._ ”

“ _What’s he doing?_ ” Keith asked in the background.

“This guy doesn’t own a single selfie so I’m gonna change that,” Lance declared. 

“ _Lance, you immaculate asshole_ ,” Hunk said.

“Guilty.”

“ _Keith will be at the airport at eleven tonight. You better fucking be there or else I will personally give you another concussion,_ ” he said. 

“All right, all right…”

Keith took the phone back to give Lance instructions on how to get to the airport without having to beg Shiro for a ride there, which would be beyond suspicious. Lance wrote it all down on the little notepad in Keith’s backpack, and made sure to dot all of the “i”s with a heart.

“ _I keep bus change in the glass bottle on my windowsill,_ ” Keith said. “ _Take extra for the bus ride back._ ”

“Back?”

“ _Yeah, so we can sort out the plane ticket back,_ ” he said. “ _You can stay over, but no one can know about it, okay? Pidge would never let me live it down.”_

“Oh, _scandalous_ ,” Lance said, wiggling his hips into the sweats. “I’m always down for a slumber party.”

“ _Did he just say something about a slumber party?_ ” Hunk asked, Lance could picture Keith rubbing his temples as he replied, “ _Yes he did_.”

“I’m serious! Everything’s gonna be fine,” Lance insisted, collapsing on his bed with a sigh. “I’ll see you at eleven, mister.”

Keith hung up without a real answer. Lance frowned at the phone before remembering what his plan was. He opened up the App Store.

 

. . .

 

A lot of things made Keith nervous, but surprisingly, airplanes didn’t. He didn’t mind being above the clouds, though with his current state of being, he could _really_ do without the whole ear-popping situation. The fact that he was doing this all on a regular weekend made the experience less enjoyable, but… it sure beat studying for botany. 

He hoped Lance had his shit together when it came to buying the bus ticket that would bring Keith all of his necessary things—like money for the ride back. He brought all of Lance’s essentials that Hunk claimed Lance “needed”, so his backpack was sneakily packed with small, travel-sized tubes of facial creams. He worried about the security accusing his medications of being drugs, but they went through security just fine.

As he waited for the plane to take off from San Diego, Lance’s phone binged. There was a slew of notifications that Keith refused to deal with, but he stopped at the username of a recent Snapchat addition.

_kkogane_

Keith glowered at his screen, turning it upside down on his lap so he wouldn’t have to face the consequences of Lance making him a Snapchat account. He groaned and flipped it back over, unlocking the phone, and adding Lance just so he could send a picture of his shoes that read, “ _Hunk’s right, you are an asshole._ ”

Lance sent a picture back, and Keith had to slap his hand over his face to keep from laughing. It felt like he was watching a night of horrible mistakes he couldn’t remember. It was _definitely_ a picture of him, but Lance was _definitely_ in charge. He held up a peace sign and stuck his tongue through his fingers with the caption: “ _I’d lick that asshole_.”

It was immediately followed up with a text that said: “ _Aw I wanted you to screenshot that so I can save it for later_.”

“ _I am not encouraging this_ ,” Keith replied.

“ _Send a pic of me I miss my beautiful face._ ”

“ _No, Lance_.”

Lance sent a picture. Keith waited to open it until they were in the air, but by that time, his data was spotty and the airplane WiFi sucked ass, so he saved it for landing. He walked out of the terminal laughing because Lance had sent another ten pictures of Keith, Keith, Keith. The first was of Keith standing in front of the mirror with his foot up on the sink, the caption pointing to Keith’s exposed calf: “ _Runner Bod Goals_.”

The next few were Lance escaping the apartment parking lot, and then on the bus with a shaky picture of a stranger sleeping with their head against one of the bus poles. He went back to selfies outside of luggage claim, and Keith found it so bizarre that it felt like everything was staged, and that these photos were computerized, and nothing was real.

“ _Have you landed yet?_ ” Lance asked in Keith’s voice through a video. He pouted Keith’s lips, making puppy eyes at the camera as he said, “ _When will my husband ever return from war—SHIT—!_ ”

“ _Keith what are you—_ “

“ _Gotta go! Save me!_ ” Lance shrieked, the video footage wavering as he took off sprinting from— _Shiro_.

Keith cursed, hiking his backpack up and running down the rest of the escalator to the baggage claim. He dodged past crowds of people waiting for their suitcases, and ran for the doors, turning, and twisting around for someone that looked like him, or, more accurately, who looked like his brother.

_How did Shiro followed Lance here?_ he thought as he shoved through the doors and turned both ways down the pickup road. Keith spied his brother’s car far down the curb, and stuttered to a halt at the sight of Shiro standing outside of the car, facing— _me_.

Lance had his back to Keith, though Keith could recognize that mess of black hair as the sort he saw in the mirror every morning. He had no reason to see himself from any other angle than directly forward, and he was surprised that he even recognized himself. He was momentarily distracted by this fact, but came back into focus when Shiro opened up the passenger door and gestured for Lance to get in.

“ _Lance!_ ” Keith shouted, picking up his pace into a jog as Lance turned to get into the car. 

Lance turned his head fully, peering over the door window in the same instant that everything about him washed over in a reflective mirror that warped and stunned them both. Keith tripped over his feet and fell with a gasp just as Lance tipped into the car unconscious. 

“Whoa, Keith, are you all right?” Shiro asked, ducking down beside the open door. He nudged Keith’s knee as his eyes fluttered back open, looking in both directions. He had completely blacked out there for a second, but he couldn’t exactly remember _why_. He was calling Lance’s name—

“I just—” he started, straightening up in the seat as he stared at Shiro. “Just tired, I guess.” 

“Let’s get you home, then,” Shiro said. Keith nodded, and the instant Shiro shut his door and disappeared around back, someone approached Keith’s window and tapped on the glass, ducking down to avoid Shiro’s wrath. 

Keith propped open the door a tad so Lance could whisper, “Left pocket—bus money.”

Keith hurriedly scrambled for it, and was relieved to find that he didn’t have to think as hard now to control his limbs. He passed Lance the money just as Shiro came in. Lance practically fell on the curb to avoid being seen as Keith slammed the door shut and said, “I don’t think you closed the door hard enough.”

They were barely five minutes into the drive home when Keith got a Snapchat from Lance. It was a picture of him and a location filter, blurred in the bus stop lights, with the caption: “ _I’m back bitches but my Prince has been captured by a Dragon gotta go save him_.” Keith burst out laughing before he could stop himself, and drawing _far_ too much attention to himself in the process. He covered his mouth with his hand and just shook his head when Shiro asked what was so funny.

When they arrived back at the apartment, Pidge and Matt were playing video games and didn’t seem to notice that either one of them were missing from the equation. 

Shiro collapsed onto the couch beside Matt and said, “In case you were wondering, I just picked up Keith from the airport.”

Pidge put a hold on the game to turn and look at Keith, and then Shiro, and back to where Keith was partially hidden behind the counter. He ducked behind refrigerator door and grabbed a Coke to avoid looking at her.

“What—Why were you at the airport?” she asked, squinting through her glasses as if she wasn’t entirely seeing him correctly.

“Momentary lapse in judgement,” he replied. “I’m gonna hang out in my room.”

He felt Shiro’s eyes on him as he disappeared down the hallway. He knew it was natural for Shiro to worry about him, so he tried not to be too annoyed by it. Shiro had his reasons, especially when his worrying came as a blessing instead of an inconvenience. Keith’s annoyance felt like a betrayal against everything they went through before they started living together again.

Keith checked his phone for updates on Lance’s location as he locked his bedroom door. He pocketed his phone and started clearing off his desk and windowsill. He climbed on top and latched onto the half-opened window fame to hoist it up over his head. It made a godawful sound he hoped Shiro and the others couldn’t hear over the sound of fake guns going off on the television screen.

The fire escape was foreign territory to Keith. He was convinced that he was afraid of heights because every hike he dared to go on with Shiro resulted in minor, momentary lapses in breathing whenever he looked down off of cliffs. The metal stairs rattled as he hurried down them, and threw down the last leg of the fire escape just a minute before Lance came sprinting around the corner of the building.

“Thank God for fire escapes!” Lance called out to him as he hopped down the last two steps. Keith barely caught his footing before he was barreled into by Lance tackling him with hugs. 

“Whoa, hey, slow down for a second,” Keith said, prying Lance off with his one free hand. The other was still holding the Coca-Cola bottle by the neck. It wasn’t every day Keith was hugged, and by the cute boy whose body he inhabited for the day no less. “Everyone’s still awake so... let’s just talk out here for a minute?”

Lance was still buzzing, and Keith wondered how in the world he had that much energy. Spending the day in Lance’s body _seriously_ stunted his energy levels for the rest of the year. In the time Keith spent in Lance’s body, he hadn’t considered investigating the ins and outs of Lance’s facial features, or the fact that his eyes were blue, and that his cheeks were spotted with freckles. His rounded glasses were similar to Pidge’s grandpa frames, and they served to accentuate the roundness of his cheeks when he smiled genuinely at Keith. 

Keith turned away fast, clearing his throat and gestured to the fire escape ladder. Lance hurried over and started to climb, guided by Keith’s hand on his back until he was too high to reach. He crawled onto the first level of the fire escape and waited as Keith climbed up to sit beside him. Their legs dangled off the edge as Keith popped off the cap of his Coca-Cola bottle and offered the first sip to Lance.

“I bought something to eat at the airport—I hope you don’t mind,” Keith confessed as Lance shook his head, swallowing his drink before handing the bottle back.

“No, that’s fine. Did Hunk, uh, help you out with buying the ticket and stuff? Did you use my credit card?”

“Yeah, we used the one your parents don’t monitor,” Keith said, and Lance let out a sigh of relief. “Sorry about… all this. It probably sounds really… insignificant to you—my whole exam situation.”

“No, dude, I get it,” he said, shaking his head again. “And I’d be pretty nervous about it all too if I had a brother like yours.”

“What do you mean?” Keith said with a frown. Lance saw it and looked away with a blush.

“Well, I—I just mean, like, he’s a bit _overbearing_. He’s like a helicopter mom,” he said.

Keith fiddled with the bottle label for a moment. He knew Shiro came across like that to most people, but unlike most people, Lance saw it firsthand the way Keith did. 

“He shouldn’t be treating you like that,” Lance told him. “You’re _nineteen_. You’re an adult.”

“Do you mind if I tell you something?” Keith asked quietly, pushing his hair back to look at Lance for a moment, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to look at Lance again after saying what was on his mind.

“Sure—if you give me another sip of your Coke,” Lance bargained, and Keith took him up on that offer.

As Lance took another gulp of Coke, Keith added, “I mean, it’s a bit personal. I’ve never really had a reason to talk about it with anyone other than Shiro.”

“Dude, I was in your body all day. I think I can handle ‘ _personal_ ,’” Lance said.

“I just—I don’t really mind Shiro being all protective and stuff. I mean, it gets annoying sometimes, but I see where he’s coming from,” Keith confessed. “Around the start of high school we went through some shit and it got better for Shiro—he’s always been a little more level-headed than me. I just… sorta got worse. I wouldn’t say I’m any better now, but when I went to college and lived in the dorms, I was pretty much… left to my own devices. There was this one time I couldn’t deal with it anymore and started planning how to end it. Shiro caught on and started keeping tabs on me. If he hadn’t…”

“I get it,” Lance whispered when Keith’s voice failed. “How are you doing now?”

“Like, right now?” he asked, realizing that his brow was sore from tensing so much. He tried to relax a little, and accepted the bottle of Coke Lance offered him. “I haven’t thought about anything that usually stresses me out all day. So I guess I’m doing okay. I’ve just been getting used to life again.”

“That’s good. How was California?” Lance asked, grinning as Keith laughed.

“I wish I could’ve gone sightseeing. I’m gonna be completely honest—being you _sucks_. I’m sorry, but I hope we don’t switch bodies again.”

Lance burst into laughter, and fell back against the metal mesh of bars on the bottom floor of the fire escape. Keith pushed a hand over his mouth to keep from giggling at the sight of Lance looking so happy. 

“Oh _man_ , I’m sorry—I shouldn’t be laughing,” Lance gasped, clutching his hands over his stomach as he sat back up. “Sorry you had to deal with my shit and—oh _shit_. I just remembered— _God_ , I just remembered last night,” he said, clasping both hands over his mouth. He looked wide-eyed at Keith, who raised an eyebrow. “Did you, um, wake up in an awkward situation?”

Keith turned red in an instant, which answered _that_ question. Lance looked horrified, which just prompted Keith to start giggling. His giggling turned into a fit of laughter as Lance whined, “It’s not funny! This is so _embarrassing!_ Oh my God, I’m so sorry! This is the worst impression to make—!”

Keith was still laughing as he stammered out, “It _wasn’t_ okay, but now it totally is. Oh my God, your reaction was priceless!”

Lance pouted at him and whined, “I’m glad you find my guilt amusing! I couldn’t have made a worse first-impression on you. So much for sweeping you off your feet with my good looks and charm.”

“My first impression of you would have been ruined anyways regardless of whether or not I woke up naked in a stranger’s bed,” Keith confessed, waving his hands dismissively. He took another sip of the Coke to calm down. “ _Honestly_ , how do you live with the headaches and shit? Does it hurt right now?”

“Hm? Oh, this is nothing right now. Usually it’s bad after a night out—like this morning—but I think you suffered the worst of it,” Lance told him. “I’m just sort of used to it by now.”

“How did it happen? Hunk mentioned concussions,” Keith said, pulling a knee up to his chest as Lance started his spiel on high school sports. Evidently, Lance had a competitive streak, and was the best goalie on his school’s soccer team. In football, he was the runner—which meant getting tackled if he got caught. Keith was certain it would have been a whole lot worse had Lance been a linebacker, but either way, Lance had _more_ than his fair share of injuries. Cleats to the jaw, knee to the nose, elbow to the eye, helmet to the back of the head, soccer ball to the face more than just a handful of times.

“I had to quit halfway through my senior year of high school,” Lance admitted. “I was past the maximum amount of ‘suggested concussions.’ I probably would’ve kept going, but my coaches had, like, an alliance with my doctor or something. They banned me from playing.”

“For the best, huh?” Keith said.

“For the best,” he agreed, and pretended to clink his nonexistent glass against Keith’s. “Should we head up? I’m starting to get a bit chilly.”

“Oh, shit, sorry—sure. I forgot how warm it was in California when I left,” Keith confessed, getting to his feet and helping Lance up alongside him. He set to work pulling the ladder back up and locking it in place before leading the way to his apartment floor. 

The window was still open, and so Lance slid straight through onto the desk. He swung off the backpack Keith packed with clothes and other supplies, and took to sitting on the bed as Keith shut the window and locked it. Lance started rifling through the backpack and pulled out his laptop to start looking up plane tickets. As Keith went to get ready for bed, Lance searched around for tickets that would provide him the latest possible arrival time for classes on Monday. He didn’t have class until noon that day, but was he _really_ willing to stretch his schedule thin that day?

Lance tapped a finger to his chin and glanced up at the open bathroom door. Keith was tying his hair up and _fuck_ , he looked even more perfect from Lance’s perspective. 

_I guess I can afford to push my luck for one day_ , he told himself, and booked that flight so he could spend Monday morning with Keith. 

He said as much to Keith as he came back into the room to grab his pajama shorts and t-shirt. “Okay, but just so you know—tomorrow is going to be entirely studying for me,” he warned Lance.

“I can help you study!” Lance insisted, grinning at the idea of helping Keith with his schoolwork. He didn’t know much about botany, but Lance figured it’d help for Keith to teach him some of the material in order to understand it better himself. 

Keith shushed him, reminding him to keep his voice down. “ _Fine_ , all right, you can help me study tomorrow. Bathroom’s yours if you need it.”

Lance probably looked like an idiot smiling as wide as he was now, but Keith didn’t seem to notice. He gathered up his backpack and hurried off to the restroom where he changed and wondered, vaguely, what would happen if he just walked out of the bathroom completely naked. He pictured himself posing against the open doorway while Keith’s head exploded into a cloud of steam. 

He frowned, shaking his head, and at last decided to put some pants on. 

Lance was 100% prepared to find Keith in the bed, so he nearly tripped over Keith’s bed setup on the floor when he wandered back into the bedroom. Keith had a couple of blankets settled on the floor and a spare pillow, and looked up from where he was sitting crosslegged on them. Lance stuttered for a moment, and pointed to the bed, as if to say, “ _That’s_ yours.”

“You take the bed,” Keith told him.

“But—”

“You’re the guest, not me,” he said, and promptly tipped back onto his makeshift bed on the floor. He rolled over, away from Lance to avoid arguing over it. Lance pursed his lips and grudgingly stepped over Keith to sit on the edge of the bed. He watched Keith’s phone light up his face as he put his backpack and laptop on the floor. Lance asked if he was good to turn the light off, and Keith responded with a muddle answer that Lance figured was a “yes.”

They both laid there on their phones for a while before Keith looked up at where Lance had his phone screen close to his nose so that he could actually read it without his glasses. 

“Hey, I have a question,” Keith whispered.

“What is it?”

“Do you think… that after you leave on Monday, that we’ll see each other again?” he asked, which prompted Lance to tilt his head towards Keith. 

“Hell yeah, ‘cause you have Snapchat now,” he said, and winked at Keith.

Keith rolled his eyes, but couldn’t deny the fact that he felt his ears heat up. “I’m serious. Do you think you’ll ever come back to Colorado? Or that I’ll go back to San Diego?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I hope so,” Lance said, and reached over to the desk where he set his glasses. He put them on as he added, “And… I know you didn’t really enjoy being me for a day, but… I really liked being you for a day.”

“You did?” Keith deadpanned, and Lance muffled his laughter behind the blanket. “Why?”

“I mean, I didn’t feel like I had to worry about anything. And I liked hanging out in the mountains all day, and even though I died a little during my run with Shiro, I didn’t really mind it. Plus, your bod is 10/10 a bod I would want to be in again.”

Keith groaned, turning his head into his pillow so he didn’t have to listen to Lance’s muffled cackling. “You’re so ridiculous,” Keith whispered, thankful that it was dark so that Lance wouldn’t know how red he turned at the comment.

“I just regret not having the time to get a closer look at _every_ — _hey!_ ” Lance hissed when Keith threw a pillow at him. 

Lance threw the pillow back with a quiet cry of offense. They giggled nonstop for a good five minutes before Keith was finally able to get his breath back and change the subject. They whispered about their lives, and about Hunk, Pidge, and Matt. Keith explained what the hell botany was so that Lance could stop picturing it like the Harry Potter horticulture class. Lance gave a whole anecdote about how he met the guy Keith woke up to that morning. He had more than one insane story about parties and sex and things Keith never experienced in college, like drugs and alcohol, and living a life full of fun, social activities beyond group projects. Pretty soon, it was two in the morning, and Keith was too jittery with eagerness to even think about sleep. 

Eventually, though, they had to call it quits because Lance started yawning between every other sentence. Keith laid there staring at the ceiling until his excitement faded, and sleep started to crawl over him in a warm, comforting blanket. He slept until his worries about his exam crept into his subconscious around eight in the morning, so he woke up and rubbed his eyes against the light of the sun glaring through his window. 

He got up and shut the blinds so Lance could sleep a bit longer. He got ready for the day and headed out into the hall for breakfast. He closed the door quietly behind him, and was relieved to find Shiro and Matt’s room open and empty, and the living room vacant. _They must be at work,_ Keith thought, and checked the other side of the apartment to see if Pidge was around. Her door was open, and he couldn’t see her in there, so he figured it was safe to say he and Lance had the apartment to themselves for the morning. 

He locked the front door so that they’d have some time if someone came back in. He pushed open his bedroom door a bit as a silent message to Lance, as if to say, “The coast is clear.” Sure enough, Keith was in the middle of making French toast and eggs by the time Lance shuffled out into the hallway. Keith leaned over the counter to check that it was, in fact, Lance. 

“Hey,” he said.

“Smells good,” Lance hummed, pushing up onto one of the counter stools. He tipped his chin onto his hand as Keith frothed up the eggs and poured them onto the already-hot pan. They sizzled and bubbled at the edges, sending up a waft of previously-cooked cinnamon toast. Keith grabbed one of the plates of French toast and absently slid it across the island counter for Lance to take. He went back to the stovetop where he waited for the eggs to fluff up before splitting it in two, and folding tomatoes, spinach, and bits of peppers into the halves for omelettes. 

“I wish I could show you around campus, but I really have to study today,” Keith admitted, hand on his hip as he flipped over the omelettes in the skillet. 

Lance hummed something incoherent, the words caught in his mouthful of French toast. Keith snorted and looked back at him as he swallowed hard and gasped for air. 

“ _God_ , I almost _choked_. What I _meant_ to say was: It’s fine. I’ll just have to come back another time, and then you gotta come to San Diego so I can show you around, too,” he said. 

“Wouldn’t that be the dream,” Keith snorted. “Let me just pull a grand out of my pocket for the plane tickets.”

“Hey, that’s what I’m doin’ right now,” Lance laughed. “But actually though—just send me videos of your campus with your pretty voice in the background bein’ my tour guide.”

“Can you stop with the compliments?” Keith asked with a nervous laugh, turning away so Lance wouldn’t have to see his red cheeks. 

Lance giggled at the counter and cooed, “ _Aw_ , you don’t get complimented enough, do you? Time to change that.”

“Lance, seriously, it’s weird.”

“No it isn’t. You know how many times I checked out your abs yesterday? Twelve times. I counted.”

“ _Lance_!”

“Uh…” 

Keith’s entire body seized up at the sound of Pidge’s voice in the entrance of the living room. Lance cursed and hid his face behind his hands, as if that would stop Pidge from seeing him. Her mouth was wide open, floundering as she pointed between the two of them before landing on Lance. Her eyebrows went up to her hairline, pegging Keith with an appalled look. 

Keith swore his chest was on fire, and it didn’t help that the omelettes were now burning. He flipped them off the skillet and shut off the stovetop as Pidge started squeaking and squealing and making a series of noises Keith had never heard before.

“Don’t tell Shiro,” he hissed at her, jabbing the spatula in her direction.

She clamped her mouth shut before blurting out, “You have a _boy over!_ ”

“I know, can we pretend you didn’t see him?” Keith begged, but she was already running at him and pointing at Lance, who looked both horrified and guilty at the same time.

“He saw your abs!” she shouted, punching him in the gut before saying to Lance, “Aren’t they good?”

“They are _very_ good,” Lance agreed.

“I’m serious, Pidge,” Keith insisted.

“So am I!” she said. “Since when did you have a boyfriend? How come you never told me?”

“One: I don’t have a boyfriend, and Two: Because you would react _like this!_ ” he snapped, gesturing madly at her. 

Lance gasped in offense, touching a hand to his chest as he said, “ _Rude_. We aren’t dating?”

“Lance,” Keith sighed. Pidge ran over to high-five Lance before taking a seat beside him. “ _Pidge_ ,” he groaned, but she was already making her case.

“Okay, I won’t tell Shiro _if_ … you make me breakfast too,” she promised.

And thus ensued another five minutes spent making Pidge a French toast and omelette while she interrogated Lance about his life. She seemed to get over the fact that he was from California fairly quickly, considering Keith _had_ gone to the airport yesterday and was called out for it by Shiro. Lance pretended as though he hadn’t met her already, or been told everything about her life by Keith. She took up their breakfast with stories about herself and what she was doing with her life.

When breakfast was done, Lance insisted on cleaning up despite all of Keith’s protests. He left to get his study supplies, and glared at Pidge before leaving her alone with Lance. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned her, and she saluted him. _She’s gonna do something stupid_ , he decided as he walked down the hall in a hurry to prevent that from happening. When he came back, she smiled and batted her eyelashes like she hadn’t done anything wrong. She did.

He tossed his backpack onto the living room couch as Pidge said, “Shiro said he’s off of work at one, but he’s gonna bring Matt lunch at the research building. I’d aim for two, with the whole… hide-Lance-so-he-doesn’t-get-murdered.” 

“Okay, thanks Pidge,” he said.

“How long’re you staying, Lance?” she asked.

“‘Till Monday morning, so I can get back home on time for my first class,” he declared, drying the last of the dishes. “I just came for the weekend.”

“Aw, bae goals,” Pidge cooed, and Lance offered a triumphant smile that had Keith rolling his eyes. “Well, I’ll leave you guys to it. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

“Whatever you say,” Keith muttered, collapsing onto the couch as Lance wandered over and dropped down next to him, and then rearranged himself so that he could lie down and prop his legs up on Keith’s lap. Keith lifted his laptop up with a sigh, and set them on Lance’s calves as Lance disappeared behind his phone.

Keith started studying by making dozens of notecards that Lance went through with him. As the process went on, Lance would tease Keith by wiggling his legs around on Keith’s lap, or stroke his foot against Keith’s arm just to piss him off. Eventually, Keith figured out how to avoid the punishments for getting an answer wrong. He’d pinch the underside of Lance’s feet and send Lance squealing, and once, Lance fell straight off the couch trying to avoid it. The sound of Keith’s laughter and Lance’s shrieks was loud enough to warrant a, “ _STOP BEING SO GAY!_ ” from Pidge’s room.

Lance picked himself up from the floor and crawled back onto the couch with a defiant huff. “Okay, new method for this game—”

“This isn’t a _game—_ ”

“—and you’re just gonna have to figure out the rules yourself. Okay, next notecard,” Lance declared, flicking to the next one as Keith groaned, tipping his head back onto the cushion. “What are ‘red tides’ caused by?”

“Dinoflagella— _EE!_ ” Keith squeaked, and turned bright red the second Lance lunged forward and kissed him on the cheek. They were both so alarmed by the noise Keith made that they both started laughing uncontrollably. 

Keith’s stomach hurt so much from laughing that he tipped into Lance, who had his head against Keith’s shoulder, crying from giggling so hard. “That—was the cutest thing I ever witnessed in my entire _life_!” Lance said, and dissolved into a series of “aw!”s as he hugged Keith around the shoulders. 

Eventually, Lance had to unlatch himself from around Keith, but he left an arm around Keith’s shoulders as he looked at the stack of cards in his hand. He didn’t seem to mind one bit that Keith started out red as a tomato after every question he got right—each one was followed up by a kiss on the cheek. He was able to calm down after five right cards, but his insides still felt all fuzzy and warm. At the last card, Lance nestled closer, intentionally teasing, and put his chin on Keith’s shoulder.

“How many species are in the phylum Ascomycota?” he asked, and smiled as Keith pursed his lips in thought.

“I think… isn’t it 30k?” he asked, and Lance flipped over the card so they could see the answer. Lance pecked him on the cheek before tossing the notecard onto the rest of the deck. “Aw, but that was the last card. Don’t I get a prize?”

“That _was_ your prize,” Lance laughed, leaning back to grab the pile of cards Keith missed. There weren’t many, but Lance insisted that they had to go through all of them until Keith got them right. When Lance turned back to Keith to start the game again, he was met with Keith’s bitter glare. “ _What?_ What more do you want from me?” he laughed. “Next question, mister.”

They had to go through the deck twice before Keith was able to get the rest of them right. On the very last one, Lance leant forward to press his lips closer to the corner of Keith’s mouth. He pulled back so that Keith could turn, and their lips could touch for the first time. 

“Good?” Lance asked, pulling back after a moment.

“Yeah. Good prize,” Keith said. “I’m gonna make more cards.”

“No you aren’t—because your handwriting sucks. Give me that,” Lance ordered, stealing the computer and stack of blank notecards. He adjusted his glasses and picked up a pen. Keith blinked, startled, and decided to search for something else to do while Lance went ahead and made more notecards. 

It was getting close to lunch, so he made quesadillas. The smell of them coaxed Pidge out of her cave, and alerted them to the fact that Shiro was supposed to be getting out of work in an hour. 

“We should go out for dinner,” she suggested. “Just you, me, and Lance.”

“That sounds like an _excellent_ idea,” Lance declared from the couch. 

“I _really_ shouldn’t—”

“You’ve been studying all day. We can study more when we get back,” Lance told him. “And besides, Matt and Shiro are gonna be here. And how, exactly, are you planning on sneaking an extra serving of dinner into your room?”

Keith gave him a dull look, and then looked at Pidge, who gave him an encouraging smile. He aggressively sliced through the quesadilla before saying, “ _Fine_. We can go out for dinner. We’ll leave and hang out around campus before Shiro gets back.”

Though they left at one-thirty, Keith took his studying supplies with him as they took the twenty-minute walk to the middle of campus. He read through his notes while Pidge and Lance trailed ahead, chattering about this-or-that under the afternoon sun. He followed their shadows on the sidewalk, and tried not to let his anxiety rise any further than necessary over this exam. He could _really_ do without this stress, and it didn’t help that he lost an entire day of studying being in Lance’s body. Still, he couldn’t be _entirely_ mad about that predicament. If the swap hadn’t happened, then Keith never would have had a reason to meet Lance in the first place.

They spent the afternoon and evening bumming around campus. Pidge and Lance left Keith in one of the libraries so she could show Lance around the buildings, and Keith could spend some time working on his own. Around dinnertime, they came back to retrieve him, already having decided on a destination for supper. 

“Pizza? Really?” Keith said, meandering down the steps of the library as Pidge bounded off the last step and onto the pavement. 

She twirled around as Lance said, “Yup! We could get one of those _huge_ ones and split it up between the three of us.”

Keith groaned, thinking that pizza was probably one of the most boring things to buy at a restaurant when he could pop one into the oven any other day of the week. Still, the idea seemed exciting to Lance and Pidge, so he went along with it, and sat through a dinner full of watching Lance nibble cheese off his crust, wide eyes watching Keith from across the table. Pidge gorged herself on the pepperoni half of the pizza, and Keith wondered why he was here when he could be eating something healthy at home. But… he really _did_ love margarita pizza… so just a little bit wouldn’t hurt.

“Don’t you have marathon training with Shiro?” Lance asked.

Keith’s mouth was full of pizza as he shook his head and muttered, “Not on Sundays. Day off.”

“As if that’s ever stopped you,” Pidge snorted. “I bet Shiro’s scratching his head wondering why you’re out with me.”

Keith squinted at her. “He knows I have an exam. He probably thinks we were out studying all day,” he said.

“Yeah… you’re probably right…” she sighed. “Which reminds me—I forgot to do my homework today…”

“ _Pidge_!” Keith cried, and Lance snorted. 

Due to Pidge’s remarkable ability to procrastinate, they were forced to head back to the apartment after dinner. Lance hurried around back while Pidge and Keith climbed the stairs. Both Matt and Shiro were back from work, watching some television show they spent the last _decade_ trying to catch up on.

“Hey,” Matt greeted them, peering over Shiro’s head to see Pidge as she tossed her keys onto the counter. “How was pizza?”

“Pizza was good,” she said. “Keith and I… were just gonna go to his room and study.”

“We were?” Keith said, and earned an elbow in the side for it. “I was just gonna study alone…”

“Well now I’m comin’ with you. Gotta supervise you and your botany,” she said, and Keith rolled his eyes with a groan as she started pushing him towards the hallway. 

“Have fun,” Shiro said, distracted by the show he was watching.

Pidge shoved Keith through his bedroom door and shut it behind them, and locked it just in case. Keith headed for the window, propping it open, and crawling over the desk to slip out onto the fire escape. He wasn’t all that surprised to hear Lance reciting, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long mullet!”

“Can it, you idiot,” Keith hissed at him, but his remark was partially hidden under Pidge’s cackling inside the room. 

“He speaks! O, speak again, bright mullet!”

“It’s ‘ _angel_ ’, you illiterate buffoon,” Keith said, hurrying down the steps to where Lance was reciting _Romeo and Juliet_ against everyones’ wills. Keith threw down the ladder and heaved Lance up once he was close enough. Lance let out a giddy laugh as Keith hoisted him up by the arms. He guided Lance away from the edge and brought the ladder back up. Keith shoved Lance ahead of him up the stairs, shushing him so that he’d stop quoting Shakespeare and start moving.

Keith wasn’t sure what he expected that night, but he certainly hadn’t expected Pidge to cock-block them the entire night. He figured she was only doing this because she could, and because if she didn’t, she could just get Shiro to do the same thing. Whatever the case, they were excellent distractions for Keith to completely forget about his exam the following morning. 

Lance was DJ for the night, and it started with simple instrumentals until he wanted to show Pidge a song he danced to Friday night. That spiraled into a dangerous cycle of Pidge recommending electronic club music, and then Lance dancing to Beyoncé until Keith had to hide his red face behind both hands. “I’m trying to _study_!” he would complain, but he never actually finished studying because by the time it was midnight, he was too tired to continue. 

Pidge left to get ready for bed, and Keith gave Lance the bathroom first so that he could shower. Showering wasn’t Keith’s main priority that Saturday morning he woke up in Lance’s body, and Lance noticed it quickly after the switch back.

“You do realize that it’s important to shower every morning after a night out, right? Who _knows_ what touched you in that frat house and—”

“Okay, I don’t need to hear it,” Keith hissed, shutting his eyes and waving his hands. “Just—go shower so we can go to sleep.”

Lance winked at him before disappearing behind the bathroom door. Keith groaned into his hands, but smiled anyways. He fell against his makeshift bed on the floor with a smile on his face, fingers drumming over his chest to the beat of his racing heart. How could anyone tolerate feeling like this? Before now, Keith had coasted through life in a mundane sort of way. His life consisted of one long flatline with ditches and trenches to peg the less-ok parts of it. And suddenly, this new elevation was starting to take a toll on his sense of normalcy.

When Lance and Keith swapped places in the bathroom, Keith hurriedly showered to rub off the grime Lance left on his skin the day before—from the run he took with Shiro. He brushed his teeth, washed his face, and changed into his pajamas. He returned to the bedroom and shut off the lights for the night. Just as he did, Lance’s voice picked up in a whisper.

“Hey, I have a question for you.”

“Shoot,” Keith said, settling on the floor and rolling underneath his blankets.

Lance hesitated, and sat up to look at Keith in the light of his phone screen. “I’m… sort of under the impression that you’re not used to this.”

“Used to what?” he asked.

“Like… just being close to people in general. Having slumber parties or whatever.”

Keith snorted and said, “This isn’t a slumber party.”

“Right, right. But, like… Okay, what I mean is: Are you a cuddler? Like, have you cuddled with people before?” he asked, and Keith squinted at him in the dark, and twisted his fingers around on the collar of his shirt.

“I don’t… I don’t know. Not really, I guess?” he confessed, and realized how _weird_ cuddling was in general. He never thought it was a necessary human interaction, and he still didn’t, but then again, video games weren’t necessary to Keith’s life, but he still enjoyed playing them. 

Lance scooted over on the bed so that he laid up against the wall. He flung open the blanket and tapped his hand on the exposed mattress sheet. Keith hesitated, and gave in with a sigh, pushing off of his makeshift bed to join Lance. “I’m gonna teach you how to cuddle,” Lance whispered, too close, and it had Keith muffling his laughter behind his hand. 

“Lance, c’mon.”

“I’m serious. I figured out that… if I’m ever stressed about something that’s happening the next day, cuddling helps me fall asleep without lying awake thinking about it,” he said quietly, eyes close to Keith’s so that he could actually see the flushed pink in Keith’s cheeks. 

Lance nestled closer and wrapped his arms around Keith, and let Keith rest his forehead to Lance’s chest. He lifted his chin higher, and settled with his own arms around Lance’s skinny waist. Lance was certainly right about one thing: this distracted Keith from everything else going on in his head. 

Eventually, after his heart calmed down, he was able to close his eyes and fall asleep against the calm rise and fall of Lance’s chest under his ear. They slept until Keith’s alarm went off to get ready for class, and even though Lance’s arm fell asleep, it was overall an excellent cuddle session that Keith would 100% participate in again.

Keith packed his backpack for class, mentally going over all of those notecards he and Lance went through. It was easy to picture the way Lance said each question—sometimes serious, sometimes suggestive, sometimes goofy and ridiculous. Lance packed his bag for the flight back to San Diego, and when it came time to leave the apartment, Lance went out the fire escape, and Keith left through the kitchen, grabbing a spare apple and granola bar along the way for Lance to eat on the bus to the airport.

“Call me when you land. Do you have my number?” Keith asked as they regrouped at the front of the apartment building.

They swapped numbers and started the trek to the bus stop. “Tell Pidge I’ll miss her,” Lance said. “And… I don’t know if we’ll see each other again any time soon…”

“We can talk about it later,” he suggested, and Lance nodded, worrying his lip between his teeth. “I… don’t know about you, but I had a lot of fun yesterday.”

Lance hid his smile behind his hand, mostly because it faltered, and wavered with his voice as he said, “I had fun too. I’m gonna miss you…”

“Oh my God, please don’t cry. I don’t know how to deal with crying,” Keith confessed, and Lance laughed, and hid his watery eyes against the front of Keith’s jacket. They hugged until the bus came by and Keith forced Lance to take the change for the transit. 

Keith left the bus stop after Lance disappeared up the steps and got his ticket for the ride. He tracked down the notecards Lance wrote for him, and read them off on the way to his exam. After the exam, he kept the cards despite the fact that they were no longer relevant. 

 

. . .

 

Lance called Keith after he landed at the airport in San Diego, and every day after that. Knowing Keith felt like they had been friends for the past two decades of their lives, and it was almost too easy to forget how they happened upon each other in the first place. When it came to deflecting flirtatious guys at parties, Lance always said, “Oh, sorry, I have a boyfriend. We’re long distance, but—Oh, how’d we meet? Online.” He talked about Keith so often that he started to believe that they met online.

They never talked about the swap. It felt like a dream now, and Keith could only remember vague details about it. He always thought he’d remember the pain of Lance’s migraines as if they had happened yesterday, but he learned that pain was easy to forget after the fact. So he stopped questioning how they met, and when Shiro started asking questions, he admitted to having met someone online, and that someone was Lance, and that they were happy together even though they were several states apart.

Months went by. 

When Winter Break came, Keith was so certain that he saved up enough money to go to San Diego for the week, but it stretched his rent money thin. Shiro didn’t advise it, and after _that_ talk, Keith crawled under his covers in a depressed mess and pretended like he hadn’t secretly tried to visit Lance over the break. Hunk knew about his plans, and sent a pouty face over Snapchat with the caption, “ _Guess we’ll just have to plan for summer vacation then, huh?_ ”

Keith texted him, “ _That’s over five months away…_ ”

Hunk didn’t respond, probably because he and Lance were supposed to be at a party that night. Keith sighed into his pillow, sleepier than usual, and decided he could sacrifice a few hours to forget about all of this via being unconscious. He didn’t dream of anything, at least not as far as he could tell, and when he woke up—

He was staring at Lance’s bedroom ceiling. 

_Shit_.


	2. The In-Between

Lance woke up disoriented at first before it felt like he was floating. He felt so light and free that he almost dismissed the fact that he was no longer in his own bedroom. He expected to panic over the unfamiliar decor, but… he had been here before, and the only reason he had to panic was because—

 _Shit, I’m back in Colorado_.

He laid back on Keith’s bed and tossed his arms over his face. He groaned into them before throwing his hands down. His eyes narrowed at the ceiling as a shudder went through his body. Why was it _so fucking cold in here?_ Did they not have—?

 _Snow_.

Lance was out of the bed in an instant.

He scrambled for the window blinds and tripped over the blankets in the process. “Shit!” he cried, tumbling to the side and rolling on the floor as he kicked his legs out frantically, escaping the confines of the bed. He was grateful that the lag in his brain-to-limbs was minimal this time around, seeing as he got to his feet in a few seconds, and made it to the window in time to see pure white light drench over him and the room.

With the blinds pulled up, Lance leant over the desk in awe. The window was frosted over on the edges, covered in ice and blankets of snow that filled the fire escape floor. There was a haphazardly-cleaned path through it, but Lance could see the imprints of the last shoveling, and how a foot of snow was now on top of it. Everything about this white wonderland was how Lance pictured Heaven looking, but… he wasn’t exactly inclined to _touch it_.

He pressed a hand to the window, though, and felt the heat of his fingers stick to the bitter cold window pane. He plucked them off and looked at the frost now numbing the pad of his index finger. He licked it off and decided to try and open the window, but he didn’t have much control over his strength, and the window was frozen shut anyways.

He clears off a spot on the desk to climb up and sit. In between studying the snowy landscape, and the frost coating the brick buildings in white, Lance looks at Keith’s hands, and holds them over his face. He traces the shape of Keith’s nose between his fingers. Keith’s teeth feel so _weird_ compared to his own mouth. He was suddenly able to recall just how weird it was to eat food the last time he was in Keith’s body…

He licked across Keith’s vampiric canines and pushed his fingers around Keith’s chapped lips. He could tell the winter air was dry, and he felt it on Keith’s skin. Quietly, Lance slipped into Keith’s bathroom and went in search of moisturiser. There wasn’t much in regards to that, and he figured that if he was going to exist in Keith’s body for a little while, he might as well do something good with his time.

He went online and ordered Keith facial moisturiser and a mask to stop the winter from killing his skin.

When that was done, he figured he’d have to leave the room for food eventually, but all of the worries about seeing Keith’s roommates rose up again. He’d have to deal with Keith’s brother again. He flopped onto Keith’s bed with a groan, abruptly remembering the incident at the airport. He wondered if Shiro remembered that—he probably did.

Lance crept to the door and leaned out into the hallway, checking to make sure that the coast was clear. The room across from him was empty—a bedroom—and he recalled Pidge’s room being on the other end of the apartment. Lance didn’t hear anything in the living room as he snuck down the hall to check. The time on the microwave read nine in the morning. Lance assumed everyone was gone for the day.

He hurried back to hunt down Keith’s phone. He skidded back into the kitchen blasting music from YouTube (mostly Lady Gaga, because Lance couldn’t help himself). He hopped onto Snapchat and recorded himself singing just so he could imagine that this was really Keith. Keith rarely ever sent Snaps like this—mostly, Lance was stuck screenshotting basic selfies (if Keith even allowed that much).

As he waited for his omelette to cook, he took a look at Keith’s collection of music, and was startled to find his playlists filled with old rock music.

“So my boy’s a fan of Queen, huh? I can work with that,” he said, a smirk on his face as he shuffled the artist songs.

He took his spatula and flipped the omelette as the vocals started up—slow at first, but they picked up the pace around the chorus. He sang into the spatula, “ _Somebody—Oh, somebody—“_ as he rocked his feet side to side with each sharp note. He pushed his hand out and back to his chest, shoving both arms in the air as he finished with, _“Can any—body—find—me—! EEK!”_

Pidge was standing in the living room.

“Uh…” she said, “I was… kinda sleeping, but this is _way_ more entertaining.”

“Pidge! Make yourself known before you go and give me a heart attack!” Lance squeaked, hand still over his beating heart.

“Whoa,” she laughed. “What is in your omelette and can I have some.”

“I’ll totally make you an omelette if you actually want one. Do... you want one?” he said, flipping his omelette up for show. He tossed it onto a plate as Pidge laughed and took him up on that offer.

They ate their omelette together, listening to Keith’s playlist and enjoying the snow outside the living room windows. Pidge decided to break the silence. “You’re being unrealistically nice to me today.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, you made me breakfast,” she said.

“Huh. Where’s Shiro and Matt?” he asked.

Instead of answering, Pidge leant over and slapped her hand on his forehead. “Ouch! What’re you—“ She shoved his bangs back and laid the back of her hand on his skin. He slapped her arm away. “I’m not sick!”

“Where is this coming from, you animal!” she cried, and they got into a slapping fight that ended with Lance screeching, “I yield! I yield!”

“You’re so loud today!”

“Am not! Stop pestering me!” he cried.

“You sounds like Lance—everytime we FaceTime, I swear my speakers lose a year to their lives.”

He gasped at her, but that didn’t stop her from saying, “He must be rubbing off on you.”

“That’s not the only thing he’s _rubbin’ on_ , if ya know what I mean,” Lance snickered, wiggling obnoxiously in his seat.

Pidge snapped her mouth shut, and floundered for a second before saying, “Okay, yeah, you aren’t Keith. _WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY BELOVED NERD!_ ”

She flew at him like how you’d imagine a flying squirrel lunging from one tree to the other, but instead of trees it was just a bar stool and Lance. He ran away yelling, tripping, and falling into the living room with Pidge on his back. She grabbed him by the back of his sweatshirt and started shaking him until Lance relented for the second time that day.

“Okay! Okay, I’m not Keith! I’m not Keith! I’m Lance!” he said, and rolled over the second Pidge got off of him.

She stood up, panting, and said, “I wasn’t exactly expecting anything to come of this.”

“Yeah, no shit. Me neither.”

Lance scrambled off of the floor, brushing off his sweatshirt and trying to avoid the way Pidge squinted at him, and tipped her head like she was inspecting a specimen on a lab table. He could tell she thought he was just being funny, so he said, “And I’m _not_ kidding. This is how Keith and I met the first time around.”

“First time?” Pidge said, crossing her arms as Lance wandered to the kitchen. He couldn’t think straight, let alone _stand still_. He started cleaning up their dirty dishes as Pidge said, “Wait—so when you came to Colorado—?”

“My roommate Hunk helped Keith get a plane back so that we could switch back in time for his exam,” he said. “And… he hasn’t texted or called yet, so I’m guessing he’s either still asleep, or…”

“Or… what?” Pidge said, and Lance just shook his head with a shrug. He didn’t have any other answers, except maybe…

“Well, last time he wound up in the emergency room,” he confessed, tapping a finger to his chin. He shook his head fast. “But that’s not likely this time around. I suffer from chronic headaches and migraines, so now he knows that and won’t have to go to a doctor to have ‘em tell him the same thing.”

“Oh, weird. So… _Keith_ is in California then?” she asked, and Lance nodded. “How long do you think it’ll last if you two don’t meet up?”

He hesitated at the question. This whole… _swap_ was new to just about everyone involved. They had no direct answers to all of the questions they had, and he was starting to wonder what even made this all possible. The last few months made the situation vague and unreliable to mentally relive it without making embellishments that turned it all into lies.

Chances were… he wouldn’t _be able_ to switch back without meeting up with Keith first.

It was nearly ten in the morning, which meant it was nine back home in San Diego. Lance wasn’t usually an early riser, and so he asked Pidge what time Keith usually got up at. “He’s usually up by eight. Sometimes earlier, ‘cause sometimes he and Shiro go for runs in the morning,” she explained, and so Lance hopped onto one of the stools and pulled out Keith’s phone.

“I’m gonna call him then. He should’ve been up by now if what you’re saying is true,” he said, and together, the waited for Keith to answer his goddamn phone.

  


. . .

  


Lance was a heavy sleeper. Hunk could walk in and rifle through his desk with all the lights on, and Lance would _still_ be out cold. It was worrisome, most of the time, but thankfully Lance always picked a ridiculous ringtone to blast at full volume so that even Hunk could hear it in the next room over.

Hunk wasn’t exactly _awake_ , necessarily, but after listening to _Pocketful Of Sunshine_ on repeat at a deafening volume, he _definitely_ wasn’t asleep anymore. He groaned and got out of bed to wrestle Lance awake, if only to alert him to the alarm that was _supposed_ to wake him up.

Hunk reached the door, but as soon as he opened it, the door rammed into something wedged against it. “What the…” he said, peeking his head inside and stopping at the sight of _Lance_ folded up against the door fast asleep with his glasses on. “Dude, c’mon, what’re you doing on the _floor_ ,” Hunk whined, pushing the door so that Lance shifted with it, rolling across the hardwood floor until he was on his stomach, snoring softly.

The sheets were all tangled, which meant Hunk had to dig around to shut off that infernal alarm. In fact, they were _all_ on the floor.

Hunk recovered the phone, and realized that it was just Lance’s ringtone going off because Keith was calling. He looked at his best friend, still fast asleep on the ground, and decided to break the news to Keith.

“Sorry bud, your boyfriend’s passed out,” Hunk said.

“That’s not Lance, you dingus.”

“I only know _one person_ who says dingus on a regular basis,” Hunk declared, hand on his hip as he turned to look at his friend on the floor. “So… you’re Lance, and Keith is in your body again?”

“ _Correct_. And you said he’s still sleeping?” Lance said in Keith’s voice as Hunk bent down next to Lance’s body. He nudged Lance’s shoulder, and turned him over onto his back.

“Uh… yeah… Huh, weird,” Hunk said, humming to himself as he fixed Lance’s glasses and set them on the nearby dresser. “Yeah, I came in here to shut up Natasha Bedingfield, but Keith was on the floor by the door wearing your glasses.”

“Wait, are you serious?” someone else said, voice pitched high in concern. “Okay, that’s _seriously_ weird.”

“And he’s not waking up?” Lance said. “Check if he hurt his head or something.”

Hunk put them on speaker and set it on the dresser. He lifted Lance’s body up and checked for any bumps in his hair, but it all showed up clean. “Yeah, nothing. He’s still breathing. He’s… _honestly_ just asleep.”

“Okay, well, that’s weird. That’s weird, right?” the girl said, whispering to Lance, who muttered, “Yeah, super weird.”

“Are we gonna do that whole… spontaneous vacation thing again? Because—I _don’t_ think Keith can do that in the state he’s in,” Hunk said, voice straining when he hoisted Lance’s body up into his arms, and headed for the bed. He laid Keith down and tucked the sheets over him.

“Shiro would rip you a new one if he found out you went to California. And by you, I mean Keith, because he’s not gonna believe a word of this,” Pidge said.

“Yeah, but last time it worked fine. We just had to look at one another and we switched back, I think,” Lance said, voice muffled a little over the speaker. Hunk picked up the phone again.

“In case you missed it, but Keith can’t really _look at you_ ,” Hunk said.

“No, I don’t think it works like that,” Lance insisted, and as Hunk quietly left Lance’s room, Lance spun around in his stool and vaguely gestured at the air. “Like, we just had to see each others’ faces or something. Like—you know that whole idea? Where if you could see yourself the way other people see you— _literally_?”

“Where we wouldn’t be able to recognize ourselves because our perception is completely skewed?” Pidge said, and Lance yelped, tapping his finger to his nose. “So… what you’re saying is that the trauma of seeing your true self triggered the switch.”

“ _Yeah_. Oh my God, I wish I could describe it, but it was like… it was like _a dream_. I can barely remember anything from then without being close to it myself,” Lance explained. “I know it sounds stupid, but I seriously couldn’t remember being in Keith’s body until I was there again. And like, _duh_ , of course I could remember it because I’m _in it now_. But… you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I get that,” Hunk said. “So what you’re saying is that you think this might work if you come to California?”

“Yeah, I think so. But I don’t want to buy a ticket with Keith’s money. I’m not exactly in control of his finances here,” Lance said, biting his lip. “Do you… think you could help me out?”

“Yeah, I’ll figure it out. Don’t even worry about it. Just… try not to get in trouble with Keith’s body? Remember what I taught you about respect…” Hunk sang, and Lance groaned, dropping his forehead to the counter as Pidge nearly fell off her stool laughing. “I’m serious Lance! And don’t even excuse Keith’s oily hair as a reason to take a shower.”

“His hair isn’t _oily_ ,” Lance mocked, sticking his tongue out as he ran his fingers through Keith’s hair.

… Okay, maybe he was due for a shower. _Dammit_.

“Okay, _fine_. Fine, I won’t take a shower.”

“Because I know you would abuse it,” Hunk said, and this time, Pidge actually _did_ fall on the floor.

Hunk went ahead and found Lance’s card that wasn’t monitored by his mother, and after cringing at the price of all of the tickets, he eventually purchased one and pleaded to some Higher Being to make it possible for Lance to afford this short-notice ticket. He sent the ticket off to Lance’s email, and back in Colorado, the ticket was opened, printed, and folded safely into Keith’s backpack.

Pidge helped Lance pick out Keith’s things for his brief stay in California. “Any tips?” Lance asked, wriggling his eyebrows.

Pidge blanched and gave a theatrical shudder. “Just… don’t overwhelm him. No parties, and… _please_ don’t update me on what you guys do in your personal _alone time_.”

He laughed and gave her a punch in the arm before shouldering the backpack and heading for the door. “Wait—you’re leaving in _that?_ ” she blurted out, pointing to Lance and his sweatshirt and sneakers.

“What?” he whined. “What’s wrong with it?”

Pidge jabbed her thumb towards Keith’s window, reminding him that there was a foot of snow out on the fire escape. “Oh,” he huffed, shoulders slumping, but he instantly perked up. “Oh! Snow! Oh my God, I’m going out in the snow! What do I wear?”

Pidge grabbed Lance by the hand and dragged him over to the closet in her hallway, and introduced him to the mudroom. As Lance kicked off Keith’s sneakers, Pidge set out a pair of snow boots for him, and then grabbed Keith’s winter jacket off of the hanger. “It’s not super cold out, since it’s snowing, but the wind’ll cut your cheeks if you aren’t careful.”

After Lance zipped up his coat, Pidge yanked the zipper all the way up to Lance’s chin, and wrapped a scarf around his neck. It was one of those ridiculously long scarves Lance always assumed were secret blankets. She tied it, and dropped a knitted hat onto Lance’s head. “Usually I wouldn’t go all out, but you might be weak, who knows.”

“I’m in Keith’s _body_. This isn’t _my_ body we’re talking about,” Lance reminded her, but she stuffed mittens into his pockets anyway. “I ran _ten miles_. Ten miles!”

“I don’t care. You’re keeping the hat on, _and_ the scarf. You can take it off at the airport and use it as a pillow or something,” she told him.

He lugged the backpack on, and sighed at the new weight of his jacket. Pidge hurried him to the door, and off he went, hurrying down the hall and stairs to make it in time for the bus.

The second Lance was through the front door of the apartment building, he skidded to a halt and nearly fell face-first into a mountain of snow. The cold air initially sucked the breath out of his lungs, and replaced it with a frosty chill that spilled through him, and seeped out into the warmth of his winter jacket. The air in front of him crystallized, and he watched it spiral in front of his nose before casting upwards, mingling with the monotonous white clouds overhead.

He squinted up at the sky, letting the snowflakes catch on his eyelashes as he watched white clouds curl out of a pipe hissing overhead. He climbed over the snowbank out at the parking lot, and skidded onto the frosted ice. “Whoa…” he breathed, his smile growing as he walked, boots scuffing on the asphalt. Snowflakes collected on the fibers of his scarf, and when he finally reached the bus stop, he spent all of his time waiting just staring at them, and trying to memorize each of them before they faded away.

“You have a pretty cool life, Keith,” he murmured to himself before the bus pulled up, and prompted him to return to reality.

The bus ride was a long one, from what he recalled, and so he snuck to the far back, set an alarm, and let himself doze a little in between checking his Snapchat for updates from Hunk. It seemed like Keith was still comatose, so Lance leant his head against the chilly window so his hat stuck to the glass, and he could feel the cold radiating against his cheek.

He didn’t even know he drifted off until he got the sensation that he was falling—the sort that had his knee jerking like when the doctor taps it with one of those triangular, rubber hammers. He leapt in his seat, and looked around to make sure no one else noticed, but for the most part, the bus was empty, and so he settled back in, and…

He was falling again. Though, it seemed as though his mind was just drifting, floating, and he passed the time in this dark spot between conscious and unconsciousness. In the process, he started to dream, as one does. At this tipping point, he found himself reaching forward, and grasping at a spot in the haze that turned into…

“Keith,” he whispered, recognizing Keith’s face instantly as the one he saw in the mirror this morning. The dream felt so real and full, filled with every emotion he imagined having when it came to seeing his boyfriend in real life again.

“Lance—you’re sleeping again,” Keith said, grabbing hold of Lance’s other hand as they wavered, lying as if skydiving. “I was worried—all of a sudden you just disappeared and I didn’t…”

“What do you mean?” he said. “This is a dream?”

“I don’t—I don’t think so,” Keith said. “You probably don’t remember.”

Lance closed his eyes, trying to remember, but every time he came close to the answer, it faded, just like his semi-unconsciousness did when he opened his eyes again. Keith was gone, and he was on the bus, being woken up by the sound of the bus approaching another stop. He looked around, disoriented, and realized that he was starting to forget seeing Keith in the in-between of reality and imagination.

When he got to the airport, he could recall only vaguely what he had dreamt the night before. Seeing Keith in the in-between sparked something, like when he woke up and remembered exactly how the previous switch felt because he was there again. The night before, he remembered seeing Keith just before Keith was bound to wake up, as his mind naturally cycled out of sleep and brought him to that vague, half-dreaming state.

 _How strange_ … he thought, handing the woman behind the counter Keith’s I.D. _It’s almost like_ …

He decided to test his theory on the plane, when he was given two hours to nap before he landed. It was so much more difficult to sleep when he knew he had to and wanted to, but eventually, he drifted, and appeared again, holding onto Keith as they remained suspended in the abyss again.

“You disappeared again,” Keith said.

“I woke up—so you’ve just been hanging out here?” Lance asked, and Keith shrugged. “Well, what’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

“Um… it’s hard to explain. I’ve been dreaming a little, but I can see you and Pidge sometimes clearly, sometimes not. You’re on a plane?” he asked.

“Yeah, because you can’t seem to wake—”

  


. . .

  


Keith bolted out of bed, panting hard and suddenly overcome by a lurching sensation in his chest—his heart. He was on his feet, staggering as the headrush made all of his limbs numb again. He clutched at his chest, shakily lowering himself back to the ground where the speckles in his vision lulled, and he was finally able to flounder around for Lance’s glasses.

He could remember talking to Lance, but it was fading, and it brought to life the memory of him getting out of Lance’s bed to look for Hunk. He hadn’t been upset then, or cursed by this godforsaken headrush. Slowly, he rose to his feet, scratching his head as he inspected the spot where he had collapsed at the exact moment when Lance woke up in Colorado.

 _Oh no_ , he thought, clasping a hand over his mouth. _How long had we been half-asleep?_

Keith _knew_ dream-time worked significantly differently than real-time. Lance was still on the plane, and with Keith awake, there was no way for Lance to escape the dreams or the in-between.

Keith hurried back to the bed, heart racing, and tried to sleep just as he did every other night. Sleep was never an easy thing for him, though, and the anxiety of the inevitable—Lance unconscious on the plane during landing, Lance worrying the flight attendants, medics being called—made it all the more difficult for him to shut his brain up and concentrate on counting sheep.

 _How did this happen?_ He asked himself, clutching his hands furiously to Lance’s hair. He grabbed Lances glasses and forced them back onto the end table, but even the comfort without them didn’t lull him to sleep.

He flopped onto his back with an annoyed groan, squeezing his eyes shut and prompting himself to think about anything other than what it felt like being stuck in his body with Lance at the wheel. He wondered if Lance was looking through his eyes now, wondering what the hell was his problem, and why it was _so fucking difficult for him to just fall the fuck asleep_.

At last, Keith determined that it was impossible for him to sleep with all of this on his mind. He bolted out of bed again, grabbed Lance’s glasses, and went in search of Hunk.

“ _Hunk!_ ” he went through the hall screaming, and knocked on Hunk’s door until he got an answer.

“Lance?” Hunk yelped, hurrying to the door. “I mean—yeah, you know what I mean, of course you do, oh my God.” The door unlocked and flung open, and Keith was struck with the force of a man twice his size barreling into him. “ _Keith!_ You’re alive! Thank God, I was so worried you were actually dead or something.”

“No, I’m fine, but we have a problem—I’m supposed to be asleep right now, but I can’t fall asleep,” he explained fast. “We need to go to the airport.”

“What? Why?” Hunk said as Keith hurried back to Lance’s room.

“I’ll explain later! Just—help me out for a second ‘cause I think Lance needs our help,” he explained, waving a hand at Hunk to get ready.

He stuffed his feet into a pair of dirty socks, and slipped a pair of sneakers on. When it came to finding a winter coat, this seemed like the more difficult task, and Hunk found him rifling through Lance’s closet until he at last said, “Uh… what’re you looking for?”

“A winter jacket, _duh—_ ”

“Keith.”

“Yeah?”

“We’re in San Diego, I don’t think you need a winter jacket.”

Keith stopped, standing in the middle of a mountain of Lance’s long sleeve shirts and sweatshirts. He turned, and Hunk couldn’t help but laugh at the look of bewilderment on his friend’s face. He hurried over and grabbed Keith by the hand, and hauled him back to the door. “C’mon, you should be fine in that. Lemme just grab some stuff and we can head out.”

“Hurry! Hurry, hurry,” Keith said, bouncing on the balls of his feet as Hunk went digging around in Lance’s things to find his wallet. He pocketed it along with Lance’s phone, and proceeded to lead the way out of the house and to the car.

Hunk all but sped to the airport despite the fact that Lance’s plane wasn’t due to land for another hour and a half. Keith unintentionally started nibbling on the dry bits of skin around Lance’s nails until it started to bleed, and Hunk leaned over to slap his wrist to stop him from continuing.

“It’s gonna be fine,” Hunk promised.

“Yeah, but how are we gonna convince security to let us see Lance?” he asked, and Hunk hissed, now realizing what had Keith’s anxiety on a rampage.

The two of them brainstormed during the walk from the parking structure to baggage claim. “I have an idea, and… I just hope they don’t think I’m lying because I am,” Hunk told Keith. “Stay here—I’m gonna go find a help desk.”

“‘Kay,” Keith whispered, and the instant Hunk was gone, he was back to chewing Lance’s nails. He was slowly turning into a bundle of guilt and anxiety wrapped up into one precious gift that had Hunk sighing and muttering to himself.

Hunk was fairly decent and improvising, and he hoped his abilities in that department wouldn’t fail him here. When he got to the help desk, he donned a nervous, apologetic look and said, “Hey… so, I have a friend on a flight right now, and I’m worried that he might sleep straight through landing. See—he has narcolepsy and I’d hate to bother the flight attendants because it’s really not usually a huge issue… but you never know…”

When Hunk eventually returned to where Keith was pacing, he gave Keith a discrete thumbs up before turning and waving to the lady at the help desk. “And _that_ , is how you get flight security to bring out a passenger on a stretcher,” Hunk said to Keith, who gawked at him and burst into relieved laughter that immediately turned into crying.

Hunk put his arms around Keith as Keith got ahold of himself and cleared the tears from Lance’s cheeks using his sweatshirt sleeve. “I-I’m sorry,” he apologized.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, really—I’m sorry for putting this all on you… and yelling at you to drive me to the airport…”

“Honestly, Keith, it’s fine. Besides, we didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time together last time this happened, so… it’s cool that we’ll get to hang out for a bit,” he said. “And it _would_ be nice to get to know my best friend’s boyfriend.”

Keith laughed, but it turned into a hiccup that startled him so much that they both started laughing.

Together, they sat on one of the benches by the help desk and waited for Lance to be brought out in a stretcher carrying Keith’s body. Hunk asked Keith leisurely questions about school, about his major, and about life in general. Keith was charged with creating detailed character portraits for each of his roommates to fill the time as they waited.

When landing approached, the lady at the help desk let them know that the flight attendants would let her know when the plane was cleared, and if their friend was still on it. Keith realized that this would be the first time in over two months that he’d get to see Lance, and the thought had him anxiously picking at Lance’s fingernails.

Hunk took Keith’s hand and held it to keep him from ruining Lance’s fingers further. “It’ll be fine,” he promised, and let Keith hold his hand until they were alerted to the fact that Lance was, indeed, still sleeping and in need of transportation.

People from Lance’s flight were already in the baggage claim, clogging up the conveyor belts when Lance was brought down in the elevator, escorted by a medic and a security guard. Keith bolted from the bench, and since he couldn’t seem to control his hand, he was still latched onto Hunk, and dragging Hunk with him as he hurried to meet them.

Keith frantically looked around the security guard to see beyond Lance’s winter boots and black jeans, sat in a wheel chair. When he at last reached his face, he was struck by the reflection of the light casting a glamour over his entire face, shuttering like a old film reel that jarred Lance’s already-aching head when he blinked hard and woke.

Lance awakened like he had on the bus, disoriented, and lost in his placement beside Hunk. The medic was talking to them, and Keith could hear them from where he was groaning at the florescent lights in the airport. The security guard looked down at him in the chair. “Hey, you feeling all right there?” the guy asked, and Keith straightened himself up with a nod, clutching to the chair’s armrests.

The medic asked him if he knew the people who were waiting for him. The instant Keith saw Lance’s giddy smile, his hands clasped beneath his chin, Keith returned the smile and said, “Yeah, Lance and Hunk—they’re friends of mine.”

“Alright then,” the woman said, slipping Keith’s backpack off of the wheelchair handles. She helped him out of the chair and handed the backpack to him.

“Sorry for… troubling you,” Keith said awkwardly, and the medic waved him off and told him to have a nice day. The instant they were gone, he was tackled in a hug despite the fact that he was currently rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

Lance wrapped his arms around Keith’s neck, and nestled his cheek against Keith’s ridiculous hat hair. Keith giggled, hiding his face in Lance’s shoulder and saying, “I meant to visit during the break—just not like _this_.”

“It’s okay! It’s okay, I’m so glad to see you,” Lance said, and Keith squeezed him harder, closing his eyes to the sound of Lance’s tightened voice.

Hunk alerted them to the fact that they were still in the airport, and so Lance lowered himself back down onto his feet, and kept both arms wrapped securely around Keith’s bicep. He was certain that there was no way in hell he’d let Keith slip through his grasp like in the in-between, at least, not if he had anything to say about it. Though, it made taking off Keith’s winter jacket a hassle. They wandered out into the calm San Diego winter, and hurriedly crossed the road to avoid oncoming vehicles. With Keith no longer influenced by his panic-induced anxiety, he was able to see California in quiet fascination.

He couldn’t believe that he was actually here.

  


. . .

  


“ _We_ are going out to celebrate,” Hunk declared the instant they arrived at the car. He was stuck as the driver while Lance hurried into the backseat where he could hold Keith’s hand a little while longer.

“What? Why?” Lance whined.

“No parties! We’ll just go out and get something to eat,” he laughed, and Keith approved of the idea.

An instant later, Lance’s stomach growled, and his hunger rose in his throat like he had a bit of bread caught in his esophagus. “Okay, yeah, good idea,” he agreed, “but after that we’re going home.”

“Aw, why? I wanna have a look around,” Keith confessed. “I’ve never been to California before… At least, not _really_.”

“Then we’ll go to a place you’ve never been to. Something… West-Coasty,” Hunk said, starting the car and exiting the parking lot.

They ended up at In-N-Out Burger for dinner.

It wasn’t exactly something Keith would classify as “special,” but it sounded important to Hunk and Lance, and so he went along with it. Fast food wasn’t exactly something he and Shiro indulged in very often, and he considered this as he took the bite of his burger and almost choked. “ _Shit_ ,” he cried, scrambling for his phone. He fished it out of his pocket and went searching for Shiro’s number.

“What? What is it?” Lance asked.

“Shiro doesn’t know I won’t be home tonight. Oh, fuck, what am I gonna tell him? I wonder if Pidge already came up with something—but he hasn’t called me yet so maybe not?” he wondered aloud, dropping his forehead onto the table with a groan.

“Pidge and I didn’t talk about what to tell Shiro,” Lance confessed. “Maybe…? Nevermind, I honestly don’t know. I have no ideas.”

“You said he knew you were planning on coming to California,” Hunk said, “Tell him… you decided to go for it?”

“No… I don’t think he’d believe me,” Keith confessed.

“Well, I mean, it’s better than _lying_ and saying you _aren’t_ in California,” he insisted, and Keith considered Hunk’s superior moral compass. He supposed a wild child like Lance wouldn’t be able to survive without one, so he figured trusting Hunk was for the better.

As he waited for Shiro to answer the phone, Lance whispered, “Put him on speaker, I wanna say hi.”

“Gross, no, I’m not putting him on speak—” Keith hissed just as the ringing stopped and Shiro interrupted him mid-sentence. “Shiro! Hey!”

“ _Hey Keith, what’s this about putting me on speaker,_ ” he said, and Keith slapped a hand over his forehead and glared at Lance, who smiled innocently.

“I’m… just… Okay, please don’t be mad,” Keith started nervously, grimacing at the looks of disdain on Hunk and Lance’s faces.

“ _This sounds like an excellent precursor to me being mad,_ ” Shiro said. “ _Well, what is it?_ ”

“You have to promise me first.”

“ _Okay—I promise not to get mad. Now what is it?_ ”

Keith bit his lip, closed his eyes, and said it. He waited patiently for Shiro’s reply, and decided to fill the silence with some sort of explanation, “I know I said I wasn’t gonna go, but a really cheap ticket turned up today and I decided to take it. I woulda told you sooner but you were at work and all that—Pidge knows, you can ask her.”

“ _Huh,_ ” Shiro said, and Keith _knew_ he was doing the whole thing where he put his hand on his hip, pursed his lips, and licked his upper teeth. _He’s mad. He’s so mad_ , he thought miserably. “ _And… is Lance with you right now?_ ”

“Yeah…”

“ _Can I talk to him for a sec?_ ” he asked, and Keith groaned. “ _What? C’mon, it’ll just be for a second._ ”

“Don’t tear him apart… please…” Keith moaned, and Shiro promised not to, so Keith turned the phone over to Lance. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Ooh, _serious_ ,” Lance jested, and took the phone from him. Keith rolled his eyes, putting his hands over his face and thinking, _This is a total disaster. Shiro’s gonna threaten to commit murder or something, I just know it_.

“Hey Mr. Shirogane!” Lance said.

“ _Ugh, don’t… call me that. That makes me feel like a fifty-year-old man,_ ” Keith’s brother said, and Lance giggled and said, “Okay, sir.”

Lance winked at Keith, who was already red all the way up to the tips of his ears. Hunk rolled his eyes and muttered, “Unbelievable,” under his breath.

“ _I have a favor to ask of you_ ,” Shiro said, which brought Lance’s attention back to the conversation at hand. “ _Just… will you please look out for Keith? I know he’s an adult and can make his own decisions, but try not to do anything reckless with him?_ ”

“I know. I know… all about that,” he admitted, a bit quieter as he played around with his carton of fries. “We won’t do anything hazardous or crazy. I’ll make sure he’s taken care of.”

“ _Okay. Thanks, Lance. You seem like a good kid_ ,” Shiro said, and the way he ended it made Lance feel like there was an empty threat hanging on it that went along the lines of, “I’d hate to see anything _bad_ happen to you.”

“Thanks, sir. I’ll just… hand the phone back over to Keith then,” Lance said, and passed it to him.

Keith reassured Shiro that he’d be back in a week at the latest, though he said it wearily, looking to Hunk and Lance for confirmation. They gave encouraging thumbs ups, and Keith couldn’t help but laugh when they exchanged a high five at the news. Keith ended the phone call, feeling his chest lighten now that he had that off of his conscience.

“Are you ready to spend an entire week with this idiot?” Hunk said, nodding to where Lance squeaked, “Hey! Be nice!”

Keith let his hand drift over onto the table to link his fingers between Lance’s. Lance stopped whining to pout at Keith, who smiled and said, “This definitely isn’t the _worst_ thing I could be doing with my break. So I’d say I’m ready for it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> O my Lorde today I decided "You know what? I'm gonna give this a plot" and it HAPPENED but it failed, but THEN IT RESURRECTED ITSELF and now I am living. I don't know if I'm gonna continue this, but... I DO know that I want to write another fluffy fic where Keith and Lance meet online but don't realize that they're each others' ENEMIES IRL. ikr let's see how basic I can get XD
> 
> Also I'm currently dying because as I was working on transferring the doc over here, MY ROOMMATE CALLED ME OUT ON SNAPCHAT I'M DYING:  
> 
> 
> [](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/132258220)  
> ALSO LOOK AT THIS NERD COMIN' UP WITH SLICK IDEAS.

**Author's Note:**

> :D 
> 
> Fight me on [Tumblr](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)!


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